Santa Clarita Celebrates the Mid-Autumn Festival with SCV Chinese Dance

SCV Chinese Dance celebrated the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival at the Newhall Community Center in Santa Clarita with an evening of traditional and contemporary Chinese dance, music, storytelling, and a special performance by 11-year-old World Yo-Yo Contest finalist Geo Gan.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, sometimes called the Moon Festival or Chinese Harvest Festival, is one of the most important traditional celebrations in Chinese culture. Held on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, when the moon is traditionally celebrated as being at its fullest and brightest, the festival is a time for family reunion, gratitude, mooncakes, and sharing the beauty of the full moon.

For SCV Chinese Dance, the celebration was another opportunity to bring Chinese culture to the Santa Clarita community through dance — this time combining a full dance program with the ancient legend of Chang’e and the Jade Rabbit, performances by young musicians, and a remarkable local guest.

[IMAGE: Wide photo of the dancers or full group at the Newhall Community Center]

Celebrating the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival in Santa Clarita

The evening opened with remarks from SCV Chinese Dance founder and leader Ting (Christine) Chen, who welcomed the audience to the Newhall Community Center and introduced the meaning of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Ting thanked Veronica Bayer, the Newhall Community Center, the group’s volunteers, performers and families for helping make the celebration possible.

Family and reunion were themes throughout the evening. Although Mid-Autumn traditions vary across China and throughout the world, looking at the same full moon has long represented a connection between loved ones — even when they are far apart.

That idea became the thread connecting the evening’s stories, music and dances.

[IMAGE: Ting Chen welcoming the audience]

The Legend of Chang’e and the Jade Rabbit

The program began with a narrated retelling of one of the best-known legends associated with the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival: the story of Chang’e, the Chinese Moon Goddess, and the Jade Rabbit.

Young hosts Cora Butterworth and Amy Moses told the story of the legendary archer Hou Yi, who saved the Earth by shooting nine of the ten suns that once scorched the land.

Hou Yi was rewarded with an elixir of immortality, but when the villain Feng Meng attempted to steal it, Chang’e drank the elixir herself to keep it from falling into his hands. She became immortal and floated into the sky, eventually reaching the moon. Her little white rabbit followed her and became the legendary Jade Rabbit, traditionally depicted on the moon preparing magical medicine with a mortar and pestle.

The story concluded with the meaning the legend still carries during Mid-Autumn Festival: even when families cannot be together, they can look at the same moon and remain connected across great distances.

中秋月儿圆，家家庆团圆。
The moon is round, the night is bright.

不管多远的地方，心里都有一轮明月！
No matter where you are, the moon connects us all.

[IMAGE: Cora and Amy narrating Chang’e and the White Rabbit]

Young Hosts Cora Butterworth and Amy Moses

The celebration was hosted by Cora Butterworth and Amy Moses, two young performers who guided the audience through the dances, music and cultural traditions presented throughout the evening.

Cora is a young actress as well as a dancer and musician. Her screen credits include voicing Child Beth on the animated television series Rick and Morty. During the Mid-Autumn celebration, she also performed Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune on piano.

[IMAGE: Cora Butterworth performing Clair de Lune on piano]

Amy, the daughter of SCV Chinese Dance founder Ting Chen, has developed as a young theater performer and dancer in Santa Clarita. In addition to co-hosting the evening, she performed Autumn Ballad on piano and later joined her younger sister Ellie for a piano duet of Bluebird.

Ellie also performed Hello to the Drum and Bananappeal on piano and appeared with the children’s dance group. Santa Clarita audiences who attended SCV Chinese Dance’s Chinese New Year celebration may recognize her from another slightly less conventional role: Ellie was the lion in the group’s Chinese New Year lion performance.

[IMAGE: Amy and Ellie performing a duet at the piano]

Chinese Dance: From Flowing Dresses to Silk Fans

Dance remained at the heart of the Mid-Autumn Festival program.

The adult dancers opened with Love Waltz and HaNi Baby, bright, energetic dances that showcased the movement of their flowing red dresses.

[IMAGE: Strong wide shot of the red flowing-dress performance]

The program then moved into Love Amongst the Mountains (YouShanLian), a graceful Chinese dance performed with large blue and green silk fans. As the dancers opened, turned and swept the fans through the air, the long silk fabric extended their movements to create waves of color across the stage.

[IMAGE: Love Amongst the Mountains with the blue/green silk fans]

Fans have a long history in Chinese dance and can become far more than handheld props. Through choreography, they can suggest flowers, waves, wings and landscapes while extending the lines and movements of the dancers themselves.

Special Guest Geo Gan: From Santa Clarita to the World Yo-Yo Finals

The evening also featured a special guest performance from Geo Gan, an 11-year-old Santa Clarita-area competitive yo-yo player who has already competed on the world stage.

At the 2026 World Yo-Yo Contest in Himeji, Japan, Geo reached the final of the premier 1A Open division, becoming its youngest finalist and competing alongside elite adult players from around the world. He finished 21st in the World Final. Earlier, at age 10, Geo earned third place in the Junior division at the 2025 World Yo-Yo Contest in Prague.

Geo was also the youngest competitor invited to the 2026 King of Kings yo-yo competition in Osaka, an invitational competition bringing together leading international competitors and champions.

For the Newhall audience, Geo traded the competition stage for a special live demonstration in the middle of the Mid-Autumn Festival program.

His fast, technical performance provided an unexpected change of pace — and a chance to showcase another exceptionally talented young member of the Santa Clarita community.

[VIDEO: Geo’s performance from the Mid-Autumn Festival]

Dunhuang Dance and the Ancient Silk Road

The program then turned toward one of the evening’s most visually distinctive styles with Mystical Silk Road (SiLuHuanYing) and Dancers Under the Moon (YueXiaWuJi).

Both performances drew inspiration from Dunhuang, an ancient Silk Road center in northwestern China whose famous cave art preserves centuries of Buddhist paintings, sculptures, musicians, dancers and celestial figures.

[IMAGE: Full-body shot showing the Dunhuang costumes and headdresses]

Dunhuang sat at a crossroads where cultures traveled and mixed along the Silk Road. Its artistic traditions reflect influences that moved between China, Central Asia, India and other regions over many centuries.

Modern Dunhuang dance draws heavily from the figures preserved in this ancient artwork, particularly the graceful celestial beings often depicted with elaborate costumes, expressive hand positions and long flowing ribbons.

SCV Chinese Dance brought this imagery to the Newhall stage through colorful costumes, distinctive headdresses and choreography inspired by those ancient forms.

[IMAGE: The three-dancer Dunhuang performance]

The Youngest Dancers Visit the Moon Palace

Children also played an important role throughout the Mid-Autumn Festival celebration.

Cora, Amy, Ellie and Kim performed Moon Palace (GuangHanGong), a dance inspired by the legendary lunar home of Chang’e and her rabbit.

[IMAGE: The four girls performing Moon Palace]

The children’s program continued with the upbeat Da Da Da, trading the dreamy imagery of the Moon Palace for colorful pom-poms and plenty of energy.

Young musicians also performed between dance numbers throughout the evening, giving the dancers time for their numerous costume changes while showcasing some of the musical talent within the community.

The Monkey King and the Peaches of Immortality

One of the evening’s largest traditional dance numbers was Monkey King – Celestial Maidens’ Celebration Song (QingGong TianXianQu).

Inspired by the classic Chinese story Journey to the West and its beloved Monkey King, Sun Wukong, the performance depicts celestial maidens celebrating a harvest of enormous magical peaches. In the story, these are no ordinary peaches: they grow in the heavenly orchard and confer extraordinary longevity and immortality.

[IMAGE: Wide shot of the long peach-colored scarves]

The dancers used long, flowing scarves throughout the performance, culminating in a striking formation in which the dancers’ carefully positioned arms create the illusion of a figure with many hands.

[IMAGE: Many-hands formation]

The imagery made the dance an especially appropriate choice for a harvest celebration — albeit one where eating the produce can make you immortal, which admittedly raises the stakes somewhat beyond the average farmers market.

Full Moon, Flowers Bloom

The final medley continued with Full Moon, Flowers Bloom (YueYuanHuaHao), performed with traditional round fans.

The Chinese expression behind the title evokes an image of completeness and happiness: flowers in bloom beneath a full moon, with loved ones together at a beautiful moment.

[IMAGE: Round-fan dance]

It was a fitting image for Mid-Autumn Festival, where the roundness of the full moon itself symbolizes reunion and wholeness.

The evening then moved directly into You Are My Expectation, bringing the dancers together for the finale and closing a program that had traveled from modern Chinese dance to the Silk Road, from the Moon Palace to the celestial orchards of the Monkey King.

[IMAGE: Finale / large group dance]

Sharing Chinese Culture in Santa Clarita

For SCV Chinese Dance, the Mid-Autumn Festival was about more than putting on a performance.

The group was founded by Ting (Christine) Chen to create opportunities for people in the Santa Clarita Valley to experience and participate in Chinese dance and culture. Ting has taught in the Santa Clarita community and leads Chinese dance programming at the Newhall Community Center. Her work with SCV Chinese Dance has brought traditional and contemporary Chinese dance to festivals, schools and community events throughout the area.

Earlier in 2026, SCV Chinese Dance partnered with the City of Santa Clarita and Newhall Community Center to present the City’s first Chinese New Year celebration. The Mid-Autumn Festival offered an opportunity to explore another side of Chinese tradition: not the firecrackers, lions and excitement of the Spring Festival, but the moon, the harvest, ancient legends, and the idea of family reunion.

[IMAGE: Group photograph of SCV Chinese Dance]

We are deeply grateful to Newhall Community Center, Veronica Bayer, our volunteers, our performers and their families, and everyone who joined us for the evening.

Chinese families have celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival for generations by gathering together and looking toward the same full moon. We were honored to share that tradition through Chinese dance, music and storytelling with our own community here in Santa Clarita, California.

中秋节快乐！ Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!