City mayors came together, gifts were exchanged, and the SLUH Lion Dance Club performed to celebrate the 40th anniversary celebrations of sister cities St. Louis and Nanjing, China.

“We were invited to do the opening ceremony at the Botanical Garden last Friday,” said Lion Dance Moderator Yude Huang. “Right after school we went there and got to meet the City Mayor from Nanjing and the St. Louis Mayor.”

Lion Dance is a dance in which two people (one head, one leg) get into a single dragon costume and begin to dance and do tricks, performing to music that is made with traditional Chinese instruments like drums, crash cymbals and the gong. It has a large cultural significance in China.

“In every celebration in China they always invite a lion dance group to celebrate it, to bring good luck to the people and to the event,” said Huang. “That’s what all lion dances are about, to bring good luck and good fortune to that event, to the whole year, and to the people who watch the group.”

The SLUH Lion Dance Club was invited to perform by Neal Perryman, the father of three SLUH alumni.

“Neal Perryman is the chair of the Nanjing-St. Louis Sister City committee,” said Huang. “After teaching two out of three of his kids we stayed in touch and he invited us to give us this opportunity.”

The Lion Dance team provided a performance to help begin the celebration.

“Lion dance provided an opening show. We did our basic routine that we typically do,” said junior Augie Lodholz. “I did an introduction to our performance in Chinese, and junior Johnathan Prichard translated it.”

The students and both members of each city’s delegation were happy with their performance.

“I think we did amazing,” said Prichard.

“They were all impressed with our performance,” said Lodholz. “They liked our more traditional acrobatic work.”

In addition to the traditional lion dance, Lodholz was asked impromptu to perform some Kung Fu that he learned on his trip to Nanjing last March.

“It’s cool to know that your efforts to study martial arts have paid off, and I appreciated having an opportunity to show off what I’ve learned,” said Lodholz. “Another takeaway is that I need to practice more. I’m a perfectionist and I was not happy with the demonstration, but I was happy about lion dance.

After both performances the two cities exchanged gifts. The Nanjing delegation presented two chairs from the Ming dynasty, and the St. Louis delegation gave a statue of Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright.

The Lion Dance team has been gaining notoriety in the St. Louis community, and is bracing for a busy schedule next school year.

“We are the only high school lion dance team in Missouri, and very few have them in the United States,” said Huang. “Next year we are expected to go to the State Capital to perform in the governor’s mansion. We were invited this year but were not ready to go, but next year we’ll definitely perform.”

The program is expected to get bigger and become even more well known as they continue to perform at events throughout St. Louis and beyond.