Michigan Lion Dance Team partners with ballet group for multicultural celebration

BIRMINGHAM — At the end of 2023, the Michigan Lion Dance Team and the Detroit Ballet Renaissance group, Ballet Edge Detroit, held a unique cross-cultural celebration in downtown Birmingham. This event, named 'Let it Snow', combined lion dancing and modern ballet to celebrate various cultural festivals, including Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Christmas, and the Lunar New Year.

Lion dancing is a traditional style of Chinese dance wherein one or several dancers don lion or dragon costumes as part of a musical and dance display.

In this New Year celebration, the Michigan Lion Dance Team tried for the first time to use lion dance drumming as accompaniment for modern ballet, presenting Eastern lion dance performances on a new stage to a new audience. The team’s president, Stacey He, said this marked a new face for the team, choosing to engage with the community and actively interact with American multiculturalism.

“In this novel attempt of 'Eastern Lion Dance Meets Western Ballet', Valentina’s school of ballet selected Scarlett Lavery, the 2022 Velocity Dance Convention and Competition ballet champion, to perform with the Michigan Lion Dance Team,” He said in an email. “The team's skilled drummers, Jovana Thomsen and Ian Shaw, accompanied Scarlett Lavery with powerful yet harmonious drumming. The robust Eastern drum beats, paired with the elegant Western ballet, provided the over 300 multi-ethnic audience members with a visually and audibly extraordinary experience. Audience member Jennifer from Birmingham shared that it was her first time witnessing a lion dance performance live, where the thunderous drumming echoed indoors, creating a magnificent atmosphere, different from the entertainment-style lion dance she had seen on television.”

Team captain Chris Chiang said in an email that initially planning the lion dance and ballet to dance together posed a challenge in selecting music. After discussions and trials with ballet dancer Scarlett Lavery, she added that it was decided that the lion dance team would drum to accompany Scarlett's solo ballet, creating a new art form. Both Chris and Scarlett are students at Cranbrook Academy.

“The Michigan Lion Dance Team is widening its horizons and incorporating different elements into its traditional celebrations of Chinese art, music and culture,” wrote He. “The 'Eastern Lion Dance Meets Western Ballet' event not only showcased the fusion of Eastern and Western cultures but also displayed the innovation and inclusivity of Taiwanese lion dance culture, bringing an unforgettable cultural feast to the end of the year in Detroit.”