This past Sunday, Jan. 22, marked the beginning of the Lunar New Year. Lunar New Year, also known as The Spring Festival, is celebrated in many Asian countries, including China, Vietnam, South Korea, and others. The celebration marks the beginning of Spring, the beginning of the lunar calendar.  

The lunar calendar is a system that uses the phases of the Moon cycle to mark the beginning of each month. After twelve lunar months, a new year begins and is celebrated as Lunar New Year. The celebration also signifies the transition into a new animal of the Chinese Zodiac. 2023 says goodbye to the Year of the Tiger and welcomes the Year of the Rabbit.

To celebrate Lunar New Year, EMU’s Asian-Pacific Islander Student Alliance (APISA) held a celebration in the University Commons, where members of APISA and the EMU student body gathered to try out Tinikling, the national dance of the Philippines and a popular playground activity in other asian countries.

The dance uses long, parallel sticks of bamboo as tools to keep a beat. It requires at least two people to hold one stick in each hand, tapping and clapping the bamboo when needed. As this is done, dancers jump over and in between the sticks. One wrong step may result in sore ankles or the crashing of bamboo sticks. APISA took a modern-day spin on the traditional Philippine folk music used for the dance, opting for trap remix versions of the songs instead. 

Sophomore Mana Acosta, one of the students who attempted the dance, was “happy [she] tried it out.” She found it “fun trying to avoid getting caught in the bamboo” and that this element “made the dance a little more risky.” 

The group also performed the dance with four sticks, which required the dancers to transition between the two sets of stick holders, and even attempted it with six sticks, which had the holders sit around in a circle to execute. 

Holding space for events like Lunar New Year is important for “representation and education,” says Senior Cindi Boyer, President and Founder of APISA. “Celebrating something that’s important to some of the students on campus and then having it available for others to come learn about it and see and experience other cultures,” is helpful to achieve both goals.