LunarFest Riverside

TAIKOPROJECT was really busy this past weekend! While one group was in Chicago freezing their tails off in the snow, the rest of us were playing for Riverside's First Annual Lunar New Year Festival. Happily, I was in the latter group with Maz, Courtney, Darren, Emily, Yumi, and Candice performing outside in the nice Downtown Riverside weather.

Emily, Yumi, and I arrived early so we walked around for a bit and saw a few of the performances, including traditional dancing, martial artists, and Chinese lion dancers. They also had a ping pong tournament going on. I wanted to play, but didn't want to embarrass myself! Then Yumi's food radar went off and led her directly to the eggrolls...

Once everyone arrived, we prepped our equipment backstage for our 1:45pm performance. After unloading, Maz and Emily needed to re-park their cars, but unfortunately finding parking was quite difficult. While Emily was still looking for a place to park, the festival staff alerted us that we might need to go on early! Luckily she found parking just in time and we went out to perform for a great audience.

After our first set, we had some spare time so we relaxed at the Coffee Bean and ate some Portos courtesy of Darren (thanks D!). We also got a chance to hang out with UCR Senryu members. They had performances at the opening and closing of the event. We later saw this amazing performer who could change his face mask in the blink of an eye. He would either turn around or flash his cape in front of his face for a fraction of a second and presto blingo -- new face! I thought one of the masks looked like Pikachu, but I could be wrong...

Our second set was at 4pm and we made a few adjustments to make it an even better performance. Thank you to the festival volunteers that were very helpful and assisted us in getting on and off stage! After packing up our equipment, it looked like the sun was setting soon. We were tired, but had a lot of fun. Maz especially had a blast because he loves his festivities!

On our walk back to the car, we passed by a booth that had some rabbits in honor of the Year of the Rabbit. These weren't ordinary rabbits though... these were the biggest rabbits I've ever seen! Some would say ginormous! I'm pretty sure the rabbits would beat up my dog. Thank you to LunarFest Riverside for having us. Gung Hay Fat Choy!