Today we’d like to introduce you to Peter Khem.
Hi Peter, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
When I was young, I was always interested in learning Lion Dance. To me, it was a very unique activity to learn. It wasn’t you’re normal sport like basketball or football. Lion dance is an activity under Chinese Martial Arts. In middle school, I join the San Diego legendary lion dance association. As of now I am the current team director and have over 12 years of experience.
Throughout the years, I have made friends and connections with groups in the lion dance community that have help given me knowledge and advice for my group to progress. My goal is to make sure our team grows and learn hard work, teamwork and develop our lion dance skill & knowledge.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Throughout my years in lion dance, one of the biggest obstacles for our group was maintaining new recruits. Lion dance isn’t a very popular activity here in the United States. Many people only see this as an activity only being perform during the Lunar New Year season. However, many don’t realize lion dance has become an ongoing activity for any special occasion.
Currently, we recruit in different ways. For instance, we talk to our friends & family members. As well as reaching out to different schools and colleges to host workshops activities in hopes of building more interest in lion dance.
One of the things I’m proud of is the growth and progress our group has made within the last year. Since 2020, during the Covid 19 pandemic, our group suffered greatly. Many of performances was canceled which made us suffered financially, we’ve had members who graduated from high school & college left the group and moved on leaving very little amount of members left in our group. Not to mention we weren’t able to recruit during these tough times.
Since the summer of 2021, little by little, I worked hard to recruit and put our group back together. During this time, I reach out to schools about our group. Little by little, we started to gain new members, and soon our team was back to its full potential. Despite all the obstacles and challenges, me and my team faced, it never stop us from growing the and moving forward.
During these last few years, there has been an ongoing rise of Asian hate crimes due to Covid. One of the things I’ve notice is how many people in the Asian community have talk about how important it is to preserve your culture and be proud of your heritage. Many mention how no matter how Americanized you are, it’s important to preserve your culture and spread diversity. To be proud of who you are. Because of this, it push me to not only keep my team alive but to also keep lion dancing, to help spread diversity, to show how one culture activity can make a difference.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Currently, I am the team leader for the San Diego Legendary Lion Dance Association, my job alongside with my team members is to help promote lion dance as a sport activity, preserve Asian culture and promote community service. In lion dance, our goal is help showcase what lion dance is and show how important is to keep its arts and traditional alive.
One of my other roles in the team is running our social media accounts, checking emails for performance requests. Our team gets many performances requests for any special occasions whether it’s weddings, lunar new year, anniversaries, grand openings, casinos, parties, and many more!
On weekends I host practices and help train my members in basic lion dance moves, teach choreography, music, and foundation.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Growing up, I was a shy person. I didn’t know how to interact or talk to people. But little by little over the years I started to be more open. Activities such martial arts & lion dance help me grew as a person. Lion dance challenge me to go outside my comfort zone and push me to do things I never thought I would be doing. For instance, I was given a leadership role to help run the group. due to my dedication to lion dance. At first, I wasn’t sure if I could handle this but I was able to handle it in the end. Lion dance also taught me about networking with people in the community and learning how to lead an organization.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Instagram.com/Legendaryliondance
- Facebook: Facebook.com/legendaryliondance
