In celebration of the “Chinese” or “Lunar” New Year, Festival Dance will present a performance by the Lorita Leung Dance Academy at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 21 in the University of Idaho Administration Auditorium.
This is the third of four in a series of Festival Dance performances during the 2016-2017 school year. This performance is co-sponsored by the UI Confucius Institute.
“We like to bring our dances to different areas where they might not necessarily have like a local dance company or even like a Chinese dance school so it’s just a way of promoting and sharing our culture and our art form with everyone,” said Jessica Jone, artistic director and principal of the academy.
Jone said the Lunar New Year is celebrated throughout Asia. This year the demarcation between the Year of the Monkey and Year of the Rooster will take place on Saturday Jan. 28, exactly one week after the performance.
Jone said between every dance she will provide some context and history for the upcoming dance styles so the audience has a deeper appreciation for the art they will experience. She said overall the performance including intermission will be under two hours.
“We’re going to be presenting an evening of various Chinese dance styles ranging from classical, folk and ethnic to contemporary Chinese dance,” she said.
Jone said the 11 dancers traveling for this performance will be from the performing group called Lorita Leung Dance Company and are some of the acadamy’s most elite dancers. She said these semi-professional dancers are between the ages of 15 and 21.
“Our focus is to provide high-quality instruction in Chinese dance and to promote and enhance the art of Chinese dance in Canada and in North America,” she said.
The academy has a total of about 110 students overall, ranging from four-year-olds to adults. When the academy was established in Vancouver, Canada, in 1970 it was one of the first Chinese dance schools in North America, Jone said.
“Lorita the founder, she immigrated to Canada from China and she was a professional dancer in China, so she just continued to pursue her passion for Chinese dance,” Jone said.
She said they are currently celebrating their 47th year, and have been busy so far. She said groups from the academy performed at Epcot Disney World in July and most recently Beijing in December. The next large-scale performance is their annual showcase in May which will take place in their hometown of Vancouver. However, she said they also have smaller performances such as the one to take place in Moscow periodically throughout the season.
“We’re just really excited to have the opportunity to go and share our culture with everyone and the dancers are super excited too,” she said.
Nina Rydalch can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @NinaRobin7