Holy Confusion and Fireworks Batman!

Today, we helped Stony Plain celebrate Alberta's Centennial Birthday. It was not to be our most organized event.

The confusion started early when the Town of Stony Plain contracted us to perform a Lion Dance at their Centennial Celebration for 7:30. We proceeded to hear through the grapevine that we were to be the closing performers before the fireworks scheduled at 9 PM. Further investigation had an organizer confirming that we would be performing at 8:45. This was followed up with an email calling for us to perform at 8:30. Needless to say, confusion was rampant, and so to be on the safe side our team consisting of Sifus Freitag (gong), Dennis (cymbals) , Playter (Kwan Kung head), Davies (Laughing Buddha), Robertson (Kwan Kung tail) and myself (drum) arrived at 7:15.

Never having performed in a rodeo ring before, we were somewhat nervous about the horse manure building throughout the day from all the previous performers' steeds. This, coupled with rain, cast some doubt as to whether our performance would be indoors or outdoors as originally scheduled. Lucky for us the weather settled down and Donna Smith from the Town was good enough to clean the ring out as much as possible to prevent any unfortunate stepping mishaps.

Two hours later, we still had not performed and were beginning to wonder if there would even be enough time before the fireworks for us to complete our dance. The organizers assured us that there would be a test firing to check for wind conditions ten minutes before the fireworks so we did not have to worry. Well, in the middle of the performance preceding our dance the test fire was shot off. The organizers quickly made a phone call to make sure the pyrotechnics crew was going to wait until after our performance. Less than one minute later the fireworks went off, cutting off the current performer.

After all was said and done, we ended up performing our Centennial Lion Dance after the official fireworks. Despite a chaotic evening, coupled with a total brain spasm causing our team to miss their first bow in their darkened, manure infested venue, the dance was completed and Alberta moved on to its second century as a province of Canada with Silent River Kung Fu's Kwan Kung bestowing his luck upon the land.

Sifu Jeff Brinker