The ACT Minister for Multicultural Affairs Mr Michael Pettersson presented the ACT Multicultural Awards on 9th September 2025.

And our very own Canberra Dragon Dance won the Award for Multicultural Arts, Media or Culture for 2025!

By not only showing the beauty of Asian performing arts, but teaching it, letting anyone who wants to learn embrace it, then make it their own is what we think multiculturalism is about.  These arts will one day be mainstream Australian arts just as much as making pizza and pasta,  and dancing Brazilian samba is!

You can read more about the award here: 

We took up a team of 13 students (and a squad of coaches, manager and parents) to perform at Market City, Chinatown Sydney on 7-8 June 2025.  Saturday was the Kids Lion Dance Open Competition and Sunday was the Australian Lion Dance Exhibition. 

We entered in 3 kids teams to perform in traditional lion dance routines along with 2 kung fu forms and a drumming performance.  Our junior kids teams had to compete against older teenagers but were brave in their effort with the boys teams being 8 and 11 yo and girls being 9 and 5 yo (including our first Moonbear Cubs entrant!).  Congratulations to our teens team with Zoe Saarinen and Andy Lo in the lion who achieved 2nd place! (out of 18 entries) Thank you to Allie and Austin from Dragonstyle Kung Fu andf Fitness who helped with percussion at very short notice due to illness of two of our entrants. 

Our adults team with Rex Li and Jesse Lo in the lion performed a bench and drunken lion routine on the Sunday and put on an amazing display together with 9 other teams from Sydney and Perth.  

Thank you to all the parents who provided transport, photography and management of our kids entrants.  Everyone had a great time and made a lot of friends with other teams.

 Term two just began and we welcome back students after their Easter break.  It wasn't much for a break for some as we performed at 3 weddings and the Falling Leaf Festival in Tumut all in 1 week!  

We also held extra training sessions as we prepare for the Australian Lion Dance Exhibition and Competition in June in Market City in Sydney! 

Results from the gradings at the end of term one are:

Junior White Sash Dragon with Honours - Elijah Esampalli #133
Junior Yellow Sash Lion (supplementary grading) - Xander Sullivan #119
Junior White Sash Lion - Oly Ai #134
Junior White Sash Dragon - Sky Ho #135
Junior Green Sash Lion - Nicholas Morphett #117

Congratulations to our students who were promoted. ​

From 2025 all our weekday classes will be held at the Group Fitness Studio at the University of Canberra which means all our classes in total will be on the same campus.  This strengthens our ties with the university and the new area will be larger, airconditioned all year round with mirrors to aid teaching.

The times will also change so that Mondays and Fridays will both be at 4:15  -5:30 pm.  Expert some changes for 2025 with a focus on increased intensity and more realism at training in both martial arts and also performing arts.  

Our Sunday classes for UCSKF will now also have a break and start again on Sunday 5 January 2025 to help prepare for our busy performance season for Lunar New Year and the National Multicultural Festival.  The weekday classes will resume on Monday 3 February 2025.

Results from the recent gradings are as follows:

Congratulations to :

Nicholas Morphett - junior green sash dragon
​Abigail Andrews - junior white sash dragon
Prajiet Eswaran - senior green sash lion​

We're up and running with our term 2 classes, concentrating on combinations of basic movements in practical self defence situations.  

On the performance side although lunar new year performances have finished we still have plenty of other performances for our members.  Last weekend we we were honoured to perform in the Falling Leaf Festival in Tumut for the 70th anniversary and continue a long tradition of chinese lions and dragons performing in rural festivals (which originated during the Gold Rush of the last 19th century).

Congratulations to Connall Ashcroft who sat a grading last term and has now been promoted to junior yellow sash dragon!
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Day One of Lunar New Year is on Saturday 10th February 2024!  To welcome in the Year of the Wood Dragon we will perform across Canberra and bless everyone who comes to see us.  Following is a list of public performances which are free for the public.  This list is being updated regularly so please check the facebook page www.facebook/canberradragondance for updates.  

A week ago we had an early Christmas Party and annual awards presentation.

The award recipients were;

Rookie of the Year - Hayley van Loenhout
Proficiency Dragon  -Nicholas Morphett
Proficiency Lion - Jesse Lo
Wolf Pack - Jishen Li
Most Improved - Zoe Saarinen
Student of the Year - Prajiet Eswaran
Three Virtues - Harriet Bell

Congratulations to all of our award recipients!!

Congratulations to our following students on their term 3 grading results:

Harriet Bell - junior green sash lion
​Xander Sullivan - junior yellow sash dragon