The APIA Lunar New Year Festival was held on Friday February 9th. It was hosted by the APIA club and took place in the Walton Center from 4:00 to 5:30 with free entry. The festival contained games, activities, and traditional asian food such as fried rice, che thai, stir fry noodles, and etc. There was also a special fan dance performance with both girls and boys from the APIA club.
Students who participated in this fan dance included: Ivy Khuu, Vy Ho, Di Ho, An Dang, Lia Le, Sandra Tran, Vy Thai, Vivian Nguyen, Andrew Vo, Htun Win, Ben Tran, Harrison Vo, Dipankar Shakya, Kevin Giang, Andy Phan, Andy Diep, and James Nguyen.
When students arrived, many waited patiently for the fan performance to begin, and members of the APIA club began to give out food. Boba, their main item, sold out within minutes. However, as 4:30 came closer, students were advised to leave the food line and take a seat to watch the performance that would begin with the girls fan dancing.
“It took us 2 weeks to learn and practice the dance. I had a few after school and at home practices too. I was nervous cause I kept thinking of things like “what if we mess up?” “what if they don’t like the dance” but while dancing, I had a lot of fun,” states Lia Le (‘24).
Followed by this performance, was a transition to the boys fan dancing. This performance included a larger number of dancers.
“I think my favorite part about our performance was being able to dance together as friends and developing our bonds together, being part of the APIA community. But in our dance specifically, my favorite part was throwing Dipankar into the air because we try to throw him as high as possible for the audience to enjoy,” mentioned Andrew Vo (‘25).
The event itself was very successful and brought up various opportunities for many to engage in a different culture. However, many members of the APIA club believed there could’ve been areas of improvement for this event to be more successful and interactive.
“It’d be nice if we had more performers. There were definitely a lot this year but I think we could increase that amount next year by including things like incentives for participation. Incentives this year were the main reason as to why we had the amount of performers we did, ” expressed Htun Win (‘25).
Overall, this festival was successful and created a want for more of these types of events, some seniors stated that they would even attend as future alumni.
