Spring is coming and about bloody time!
I'm sitting in Cafe Nero watching crowds of people walk by towards Leicester Square to see the Dragon Dance of Chinese new year.
I first saw this by change when I was 18 and travelled up to London to visit my then Swedish girlfriend. We'd arranged to meet at Leicester Square tube station which was a ridiculous thing to do with its many exits and tens of thousands of people. Something like six million people use that station every year! We met and a date was had with hand holding, kisses and a lot of ‘wow that's expensive!’ But I clearly remember the Dragon Dance. The swirling whirling dragon enthralling the crowds.
They say youth is wasted on the young, and I have to agree. Happy days :)
There is an irony about the Dragon Dance. The majority of the crowd are hoping it doesn't rain, and yet the Dragon Dance is a rain dance.
The story is old, dating to the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) and like so much of dance history is probably much older.
The story goes that a lady from the village of Lotus, named for a pond full of lotus flowers, that presumably was next to a village called Duckweed! Well she had a 999 day pregnancy and gave birth to a boy with lizard scales. The village chief wanted to kill the boy so she hid him in the pond in a basin. The Chief found him and raised his knife to kill him, but in a flash of lightning and clap of thunder the boy jumped out and grew into a massive golden dragon. Ever since the Dragon has brought rain to the village in times of drought and the villages make a dragon with 999 paper scales and dance a dance of thanks for the rain care of the dragon.
I’m curious about the similarity to the story of Moses being hidden in the reeds. The connection between dragons and rain explains a lot about Wales!
It’s sunny, and I have to start my Salsa Rapido 1-Day Intensive workshop.
Good luck to the dragon dancers and their crowd. I hope no one's disappointed that the dragon isn't like the ones from Game of Thrones. There's a Happy Potter shop across the street so at least our belief in magic is still real :)
Happy New Year
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