While 2016 is officially a month old, this week the District’s Chinese-American community will celebrate the Spring Festival, also known as Lunar New Year.
The Kennedy Center will be getting in on the celebrations this weekend, with dance performances, traditional Chinese arts and crafts and the debut of the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra under maestro Muhai Tang in the Kennedy’s Concert Hall.
“Lunar New Year is not only the most ceremonious and lively traditional Chinese festival, but also one of the festivals that have the closest connection with nature around the world,” said Alicia Adams, the Kennedy Center’s vice president for dance and international programming. “Falling on the first day of the first month of the lunar calendar made by ancient people according to celestial phenomena, the Spring Festival marks a new round of sowing and harvesting after conforming to the seasons and recuperating, embodying a thousand-year-long sincere wish for a harmonious coexistence of human beings, nature and the universe.”
The ancient Chinese calendar features a combination of 12 animals with 12 “earthly branches” to count out the years as well as to mark the years of people’s births. The “Sheng Xiao,” or Chinese Zodiac, conforms to the ancient Chinese culture’s views on faith and luck.
This new year will commence the Year of the Monkey.
“It not only reveals their love and respect for animal totems, but also matches their quest for an independent and prosperous relationship with nature,” Ms. Adams said of the Chinese calendar. “The concern for nature and animals, as well as the expectation of harmony and peace, are both deeply rooted in Chinese traditional culture.
“In current days, the environment is polluted due to industrialization, nature is alienated in the process of urbanization, and more and more people suffer from anxiety caused by the fast-paced life. The value of achieving harmony between man and nature becomes more valuable considering the current circumstance.”
According to Ameredia.com, while Chinese-Americans are most heavily represented in Western states, Washington, D.C., in fact boasts one of the country’s most significant Chinese-American populations centered in and around the downtown areas of the District. Overall, Asian-Americans in the greater D.C. metro area comprise approximately 9.3 percent of the total District population.
Accordingly, the Kennedy Center events will include popular Chinese acts in a show on Friday, a recital by an all-girls choir from Shenzen on Sunday and an arts troupe from the province of Henan that includes opera singers, acrobats and traditional Chinese music on Monday.
“Approximately 1,000 Chinese artists have appeared on our stages since 2005,” Ms. Adams said. “To now have an opportunity to celebrate such an auspicious occasion on the Chinese calendar with the theme of the Lunar New Year is so exciting. Celebrating Chinese New Year is celebrating America’s embrace of diversity … reminding us of one of America’s core values.”
More information about the Chinese New Year events can be found at Kennedy-Center.org/calendar/series/CNY.
“To offer our audiences an opportunity to continue to experience and explore the arts and culture of such a culturally rich country is important to the mission of the Kennedy Center,” Ms. Adams said.
• Eric Althoff can be reached at twt@washingtontimes.com.
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