Today I went to the National Mall for the Annual
Smithsonian Folklife Festival. This year the festival highlighted China and Kenya. I focused on the China portion of the
festival. The first dance I saw was actually
of a man dressed as a woman doing the traditional lantern dance; later in the program,
he performed the male version of the dance with a female partner. The man is one of the foremost traditional
dancers in China. Along with the lantern
dance, performers also did dances that told the stories of flowers and
trees. I also was lucky enough to see the end of the
lion cart performance. The lion cart performance
is dancing lion puppets controlled by a troop of 8 to 10 people. It was fun to watch, once I squeezed myself
into the crowd.
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The Lions in the Lion Cart
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Since these performances were held in outdoor tents, it was
a slightly difficult to meter through the camera for some photos. I mostly used either a 400 ISO or 800 ISO for
the dancers with an aperture set at either f8.0 or f4.0. I varied the shutter speed to be able to
catch some motion of the dancers but tried to stay between 1/80s and
1/200s. You can see all the pictures under my
Folklife 2014 gallery.
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| Man performing the Lantern Dance |
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| Beginning of the Tree Dance |
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