As the crowd grew to watch the gravity-defying high pole lion dance, Chloe Yip warned the audience at Nathan Phillips Square Saturday that her team was a little rusty.
“We just came back from a competition, so please be patient with us,” she said.
The 10 members of her Scarborough team, the Soaring Eagles, were fresh from their national lion dance championship victory in Edmonton, Alta., last week. But they hadn’t much time to prepare for the high pole variation of the traditional Chinese dance that involves performing acrobatics across a series of elevated poles.
Lion dancers with the Soaring Eagles team, from Scarborough, perform for the appreciative crowd at Nathan Phillips Square.
Nathan Bawaan/É«É«À² StarIf not for Yip’s warning, the audience would never have known the Soaring Eagles were out of practice. The all-ages crowd gasped, cheered and applauded as two duos in vibrant, multicoloured costumes did leaps, lifts and even a flip across the poles of varying heights spaced a few feet apart.
Lion dancers do a flip off the high poles. (Aug. 30, 2025)
Nathan Bawaan / É«É«À² StarThe performance was one of many at the sixth annual É«É«À² Dragon Festival, a three-day event organized by the Canadian Association of Chinese Performing Arts (CACPA) aimed at showcasing Chinese culture.
Lion dancers gracefully jump across the high poles. (Aug. 30, 2025)
Nathan Bawaan / É«É«À² Star“It’s amazing,” said CACPA executive director David Zhang. “It’s a fun experience and a way to enjoy the last bits of summer.”
Under sunny skies and temperatures that climbed to 22 C by mid-afternoon, hundreds watched performances at one of three staging areas around the downtown square, and enjoyed food offerings and homemade items from a collection of vendors shaded by white tents.Â
Women line up to step out onto the runway on the floating stage in the fountain at Nathan Phillips Square at Saturday’s É«É«À² Dragon Festival.
R.J. Johnston/É«É«À² StarParents moved through the crowd with their strollers, others armed with cameras and selfie sticks stopped to take photos of the festivities and performers in colourful costumes weaved through the throng to join their teams preparing to take the stage.
A small wedding party leaving city hall added to the celebratory vibe.
The festival began Friday morning and wraps up at 9 p.m. Sunday, and by then Zhang said he expects thousands of people will have come out to enjoy it. He noted the festival — paused during the COVID-19 pandemic — has grown every year since its start in 2018.
For Zhang, the highlight of the festival each year is the lion dance performance — something that became evident as those in the crowd competed for a clear view of the Soaring Eagles dancers on Saturday.
Front-row spots were in high demand as kids and other short fans jostled for space. Volunteers in bright orange shirts worked to keep things calm in the scuffle for space.
But by the time the performance started, the audience was focused — and entranced.
Yip said being able to spread “good luck and joy” is her favourite part of being on the The Soaring Eagles team.
“It’s really great to be able to share our culture with so many people who may not be familiar with lion dance or Chinese culture,” she said.
While the Dragon Festival’s goal is to grow awareness about Chinese culture, Zhang stressed that people shouldn’t view it as separate from Canada.
“We don’t see us as unique sort of culture,” he said, “We’re just a part of the Canadian multicultural society.”
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