NEW YORK—Dueling dragons and graceful fan dancing came to the Brooklyn Children's Museum last Friday. The performance, put on by the Chinese-language television station New Tang Dynasty, is part of a string of performances being planned to revitalize traditional Chinese culture and promote the station's 2007 Chinese New Year Spectacular in February.
The "mini-spectacular" consisted of three short performances aimed at young children. The first, a traditional lion dance had the children wide-eyed and exclaiming at what looked like a giant orange and yellow, big-eyed Muppet. Then came a solo-fan dance. A single female dancer did a traditional impression of a flower-like maiden using two colorful fans.
By far the most engaging of the performances was a parable about a bad red dragon that demanded gifts from the village children in return for bringing the rain. When the children can bring no more gifts, the cruel dragon stops the rain and the village people suffer. That is, until a kindly white dragon happens by and teaches the red dragon some manners.
The kids especially liked the acrobatic showdown between the two dragons.
"I liked the part when the white dragon hit the red dragon in the face and he fell over," said one young dreadlocked Brooklyn resident.
A brother and sister come all the way from London were partial to the lion dance. "I also liked the fan dancing," the girl said.
According to one of the shows director's, Mr. Fan Yu, the aim of the mini-spectacular performances is to expose young people to traditional Chinese myths and culture and to encourage them and their families to attend the larger performances this coming winter.
This year's Chinese New Year Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall will be held from February 14 to 17. A Christmas-time version called Holiday Wonders will be held in December at Beacon Theater and will include special one hour-long children's matinees.
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