On Sept. 19, the Asian Community Development Council (ACDC) held its annual Asian Autumn Moon Festival at the J Resort Glow Plaza.
The festival honored cultures from all over Asia, through food vendors selling traditional, modern and fusion cuisine. It featured musical, dance and martial art performances from Northern Nevadan businesses, organizations and clubs.
Also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival or Moon Festival, the holiday has been celebrated in Chinese culture for over 3,000 years. It is observed on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar, or between Sept. 7 through Oct. 8. The Moon Festival was meant to rejoice in the time of the year when the harvest was at its most bountiful. It has also been practiced by Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Singaporean, Malaysian, Indonesian, Cambodian and many other cultures across Asia.
The Asian Autumn Moon Festival featured K-pop dance performances by Second Nature, also known as Urban Dance Club (UDC) from the University of Nevada, Reno. 22-year-old senior, Adam Sterling, is the club’s president, co-historian and performance team captain.
“We like to share our passions with people and an audience,” Sterling said. “With the Asian Moon Festival, even though it was more hip-hop oriented, K-pop is still a celebration.”
UDC danced to the K-pop songs “OKay” by South Korean boy group xikers and “+82” by South Korean girl group BADVILLAIN. With their strong dance background, they wanted to have a set dedicated to a hip-hop dance style, which turned out to be their most difficult performance with its high energy and intense choreography.
“For only having four or five practices, I think that we did really good,” he said. “I’m really proud of everyone.”
20-year-old junior Emily Tran, the co-captain of UDC, agreed with Sterling about the complexity of their dances, calling it “the hardest set we’ve ever done.” Tran credits the success of their performance to the amount of hours of practice and dedication that UDC put in.
“Honestly, none of this would have been possible, if not for the work ethic of our team,” she said. “Because we did our part the best we could, and when parts that we were lacking, our team really stepped up.”
UNR’s Nevada Filipino Club (NFC) brought traditional Filipino culture to the Moon Festival through tinikiling, the national dance of the Philippines. The dance features two bamboo poles being held by two people from opposite ends while another person, or people, dance inside and outside the poles as they are hit together. The dancing is meant to imitate the tinikling bird from the Philippines while the bamboo represents bamboo traps placed in rice fields to capture the bird.
21-year-old senior Isis Villa, the director of culture, spoke about the performance.
“As someone who has done other Filipino dances, it is probably the most difficult one because not only do you have to present well in your upper body, but your feet also have to be locked in,” she said. “You have to have a very precise technique with your feet.”
For NFC, although the Moon Festival isn’t typically celebrated in the Philippines, it was a great opportunity to showcase Filipino culture with a fun dance that the audience enjoyed.
Villa spoke about how her mother danced to tinikling once during her childhood when she wasn’t exposed to much of her culture. After seeing the beauty of the dance, Villa followed suit through NFC.
“I want to do this,” she said. “And have the opportunity to be able to share that with everyone, not only my club members but the audience as a whole.”
21-year-old Juan Rivera, the president of NFC, praised the performance team for displaying their culture at events such as the Moon Festival to build a community at UNR and foster inclusion.
“It reminds people that they’re not alone and that a community like Nevada Filipino Club will always be there for them,” Rivera said. “Especially if they’ve never found a community.”
The third and last UNR organization to take the stage was the Musical Therapy Club, with cover songs of “Apple Cider” by beabadoobee and “So Easy (To Fall in Love)” by Olivia Dean.
“We chose them because they got really big, and seeing Asian-American artists being represented I think is really important and inspiring to other people,” said 21-year-old senior Torri Cachero, the club’s president. She sang vocals for the first song and also plays guitar and bass guitar for Musical Therapy Club.
Cachero spoke about the value of Asian festival-goers watching and listening to the majority Asian members of Musical Therapy Club who sang songs by Asian artists. The audience getting to watch and listen to talented musicians who look similarly to them onstage is what drives the club to perform. The Musical Therapy Club wants to remind their audience that music is for everyone.
20-year-old Kennedi Brown, club treasurer, guitarist and bassist, agreed: “I think it’s important for music to be accessible to everybody. I just think it’s a beautiful thing.”
19-year-old cellist Joleane Halle, added, “It [the Moon Festival] really helps people spread out, come together in one place and really see community from every part of Asia. It really shows how diverse Reno truly is because from day-to-day, you don’t really get to see it.”
Whether you love dancing, singing or playing instruments, the Asian Autumn Moon Festival was the opportunity to observe and admire the cultural traditions across Asia and Pacific Island while also being in awe of musical performances from the Asian organizations in Northern Nevada and the clubs at UNR.
