A Wedding Lion Dance

Today I performed in the usual wedding lion dance. There were only two unusual things about it. The first was that the groom was the brother of one of my Si Hing's. The second was the bride and groom did a cool, synchronized dance routine to a medley of different songs. Okay and really the main reason why it was different for me is that I haven't actually done a regular Chinese Wedding Lion Dance in a long time. Most of the ones I've been to recently are rather strange requests by people interested in Lion Dance as a representation of Chinese culture. Chinese culture being a culture either other than their own, or the traditions being something that they are less familiar with. At this wedding we actually knew the people we were dancing for, and it was down the street in Chinatown.
I played a secondary role. The leadership roles being taken over by kids that I taught when they were children. Still I was involved in the dance as head and tail, and we did combos, but instead of giving cues, I was taking them.
It kind of reminded me of some of my first lion dances. I could feel the pace of everything through a sort of beginners lens. Except it was much easier physically. I mean this is actually what we train for, so it was easy, even though practicing with my teammates consisted of a brief warm up at the restaurant. There were some curve balls (for me), as to how the order of the combos actually happened, or maybe just a misunderstanding. But our system of safety procedures (i.e.) always checking before you do a combo and various signals, meant that it all went smoothly without a hitch. I was going to bring Noah to this one, but he fell asleep in the car. In hind sight, it would have been really difficult if he had come, but since he didn't, it was incredibly easy.