On Saturday night, Brandeis' Chinese Cultural Connection celebrated the Chinese Lunar New Year by showcasing ethnic performances that ran the gamut from the traditional to the modern. This year's show featured both Brandeis' own talented students as well as groups from around the Boston area. A lion dance team and kung fu artists from the Wah Lum Kung Fu & Tai Chi Academy in Malden, Mass., a band from Berklee College of Music and an a capella group called Syncopasian from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology all joined in the festivities.

The evening got off to an enthusiastic start. Audience members cheered for their favorite Chinese cities as images appeared on a slide show. Then the Wah Lum Kung Fu & Tai Chi Academy took the stage, performing a traditional lion dance. If you've never seen a lion dance, you are missing out on an extraordinary experience. Each ruffled, sequined and furred costume contained two performers wearing similarly shiny and furry pants to simulate the lion's legs. The front person held the heavily decorated lion's head, complete with a flapping mouth and ears and eyes that blink open and shut. The lion dancers pranced around the stage to the music of a large drum played with sticks and accompanied by cymbals. Two performers wearing silk clothes and giant heads painted with the faces of Buddha, and a girl danced with the lions. The climax of the dance came when the lions "ate" oranges, red-packaged candy and lettuce and then threw all of the food into the crowd to the sound of crashing cymbals. The audience eagerly caught the flying nourishment.

Next came song and dance acts celebrating both traditional and modern Chinese culture. The most traditional act was a folk dance performed by Anita Kao '14, who twirled around the stage while spinning sequined pieces of fabric on her fingers. On the more modern side, several groups danced to choreographed, music video-like Chinese pop songs. The fashion show was the last act before intermission. It transitioned from traditional Chinese to modern, more western dress. At the beginning, the models styled short traditional dresses in different prints and patterns. As the show progressed, the models showed off more modern clothes featuring asymmetry, translucent fabrics and denim. Many of the later outfits looked like what stylish Brandeisians wear to class every day. Some of the students really owned the runway, blowing kisses and striking poses before turning and walking back off stage.

The "Girls' Dance Performance" by Karen Hu '12, Tianye Zhang '12, Ye Wang '13 and Julie Yiu '13 blended aspects of Chinese and American culture. They started by moving in unison to a Chinese song that then made an unexpected transition into The Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps." The style of dance and the sparkling costumes of the dancers, however, did not change, creating continuity even with the radical change of song. Another performance that showed a mix of American and Chinese culture was the rap performance by Anson Shao '14, Jeffrey So '14, Rayne Xie '14 and Lei Li '14. The performers, wearing black suit jackets, performed the originally American style of music in Chinese.

My favorite act was Kay Zhou '13 and Summer Zhou's '13 performance of a song by Pomegranate Woman. The announcer explained to the audience that the song is an expression of the heavy burden placed on the hard-working women of the Nu ethnic group. The sad lyrics were accompanied by the performers' languid choreography: moving the long sleeves of their dresses in graceful arcs. When one of the microphones would not work, the girls teamed up to use the remaining one, inadvertently adding even more emotion to the piece.

Tang Yutian, who is working toward a master's degree in Psychology played an entrancing song on a two thousand-year-old pear-shaped Chinese instrument called a pipa. Her fingers plucked and strummed the strings at a seemingly impossible speed, creating ethereal crescendos.

A video, directed by Jeffrey So '14 and shot by Lori Shen '14, expressed, even to the audience members who could not understand Chinese, the emotions felt by a son frustrated by his mother's inability to use technology but who still misses home while away at college.

These and many more performances graced the evening, showing a wide range of Chinese culture. The event was followed by a banquet of delicious Chinese food, allowing the audience to discuss and digest the many wonderful performances they had just seen.