Family Arts Day explores multiculturalism

The head of a red satin lion bobbed up and down to an ancient drum beat, weaving in and out of a crowd gathered to watch it perform. Suddenly the beast jumped on it’s hind legs, revealing two young men, one propped on the others’ knees.

David Lam, 19, playing the role of the lion’s head, grabbed a head of lettuce and a tangerine. He passed both to his hind end, played by Dui Phan, 21, who rips it to shreds as an animal might do. .

You may wonder what happens next.

“The lion spits it out and, if it hits you, it means you have good luck for the rest of the year,” said Hung Le, founder of Gio Nam, a part of the Vietnamese Student Association at UC Irvine. “The whole point is to scare away the evil spirits and welcome good luck.”

The group performed with the Ballet Folklorico by Relampago Del Cielo of Santa Ana and the South Coast Simcha Band Sunday, as part of the Family Arts Day at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach.

“It’s a lost art, the dance,” 21-year-old Le said. “We like to show our Asian heritage, what our parents and grandparents all saw and did as kids, but in the U.S. we don’t see a lot of.”

A native of Vietnam, Le first performed the Lion dance for a culture night event at his high school in San Diego. The event inspired him to form his own group at UCI, which performs at weddings and cultural events all over the county. The money the group earns goes toward more practices and technical repairs.

Sunday afternoon the lion had a problem batting it’s left eyelid. That costume gets quite a workout during performances; the moves of the lion derive from martial arts techniques, which could be seen in the acrobatics performed by Phan and Lam.

“The two people pretty much have to function as one, to get the feel of how the other moves,” Le said. “We do a lot of stunts.”

While Phan and Lam danced for good fortune, kids designed piñatas, dreidels, Chinese paper lanterns and other holiday crafts from around the globe.

Event organizer Andrea Dominguez saw the mixing of holiday celebrations in the museum setting as a genuine opportunity for cultural networking within county borders. “Art is a good entry point for people to learn about other cultures,” Dominguez said. “They are usually familiar with the iconography but maybe not the history.”

A teacher at each table explaining the cultural traditions of each project. While families cut and pasted, they learned about the history of the dreidel and the Chinese zodiac.

“That way it’s not so boring as sitting in a class getting lectured to,” Dominguez said.

Maggie Cervantes of Anaheim constructed a cat-faced piñata out of paper plates and crepe paper with her daughter Daniella.

“I think it’s great for the kids to learn that we live in a multicultural country,” Cervantes said.

Before the arts and crafts with her mom, 9-year-old Daniella performed La Costilla, a traditional dance rooted in the Mexican state of Michoacan, with the Santa Ana-based dance company Relampago del Cielo,

“I’m putting on the costume, being there dancing,” Daniella said. “It gets people interested.”

“We want to educate the community on our culture,” said director Marlene Peña-Marin, whose mother, Rosie Peña, began the group 30 years ago. Bringing such a diverse culture together through dance helps children like Daniella, and Peña-Marin’s own two daughters, appreciate their own heritage and “keep the tradition pure,” she said.