The Lunar Show was hosted in the MHS theater for the first time in three years, Chinese Club President Naomi Gong said. COVID prevented the show from happening for the past three years, Gong said.
“In my sophomore year, we went online, so we didn’t have a Lunar Show,” Gong said. “Then, in my junior year we had a virtual show due to COVID.”
The tickets were sold out a few days before the show, totalling over 400 attendees, according to the Chinese Club’s Instagram page.
“Last year, we had an online show. It was very silent and awkward, but this year, our audience was super excited and very supportive,” Chinese Club Officer Ling Casenas said.
The show has been a long-standing tradition at MHS, ever since the Chinese Club was established, which was over 20 years ago, Gong said. Although it was originally created to celebrate the Lunar New Year, it now encompasses acts from a multitude of different cultures, she added.
Any participant could sign up for existing acts, or create their own, according to Gong.
“We make sure that practices don’t overlap so everyone can participate in as many acts as they want,” Gong said.
The show itself was composed of various musical acts such as dances or singing performances, and each act was met with applause.
The show opened with a lion dance performance by the MHS Lion Dance Club. The act begins with a singular yellow lion on stage, with the drummers and cymbalists performing in the background. The act initially begins with the lion dancing on stage around a pot labeled with alcohol. The lion eventually starts drinking from the pot and becomes drunk, and it stumbles around in a drunken stupor, before falling to the floor. Soon after, a red lion walks onto the stage, dancing along with the yellow lion. The two of them end the act together by displaying bright banners that say “Happy New Year.”
The Korean Dance Team (KDT) also collaborated with the Korean American Student Association (KASA), performing a series of upbeat, synchronized dances to “ANTIFRAGILE” by LE SSERAFIM, “La Vie en Rose” by IZ*ONE, and “Shutdown” by Blackpink.
Another performance was by a band by the name of Me and the Birds, which performed a cover of “Moonlight on the River” by Mac DeMarco and an original song called “Zach’s Song”.
At the end of the show, each of the Chinese Club officers deliver a speech on stage, thanking various people for their contribution to the show, which has been long in the making.
“Once we finish the officer election, that’s literally when we start planning,” Gong said, “We start reminding the officers to start thinking about any themes they would want to propose. The practices usually start two to three months before the show. This year, we started practice in the middle of November.”
The backstage worker practice starts around a week before the show, Lunar Show backstage worker Angie Wang said.
“The acts were practiced separately, but our practice started when we had access to the theater, which was a week before the show,” Wang said.
The officers are each assigned a role in the planning of the show according to their capabilities, Casenas said.
“Some people are in charge of the backstage and just have and assign jobs to all the performers,” Casenas said, “As for me, I took more of a choreographer and organization role.”
The planning process was challenging to Gong, who has participated in this event since her freshman year, as her role in the show this year was much more crucial than in previous years, Gong said.
“It’s more confusing this year. Last year, I was more in charge of backstage people,” Gong said, “This year, I’m more in charge of scheduling and getting all the music together and distributed and making sure everyone is in one collective group chat.”
The Chinese Club, the producers of the show itself, also provide a lot of the materials needed for the show, such as many of the dresses and props, Gong said.
“We have a bunch of the materials that we basically store in our homes,” Gong said, “So, for example, a good chunk of my room is just to store stuff and it is so for each officer as well.”
Gong also hopes that the show brings more attention to Lunar New Year to people of other cultures.
“Lunar new year, in general, is celebrated by so many cultures,” Gong said, “It’s just like celebrating everyone.”