You can experience our Chinese dance workshops for Chinese New Year 2026 to celebrate from the middle of February, or all year round with our Chinese dance workshops.

Chinese New Year 2026

2026 is a really special year as it’s the Year of the Fire Horse. 

The combination of the fire (element) and the horse (animal) is a rare event in the Chinese Zodiac. It happens only once every 60 years. So get ready for a fiery ride this year and go forward to embrace new opportunities!

People born under the sign of the Fire Horse are said to be creative, passionate and they make swift progress. It’s their year of adventure and breaking free from any limitations – sounds great to us.

Chinese props

We show lots of props before starting the dance workshops. This makes it really interactive for the participants and children love exploring new things. It also gives them a bit of background about a different culture.

We show things such as lanterns, a Chinese flag, lion puppet, lucky hanging ornaments, decorative fans, pictures of Dragon dances and costumes.

(see pic on the right for all the props)

Your Zest dance teacher will also wear a Chinese outfit.

Chinese Dance Workshops

Your students will then get to learn an exciting traditional Fan dance. They can pre-make their own simple paper fans before we come in, if you want to make that into an activity to link with it. Or we can bring in Chinese fans for everyone to use. Just let us know which you’d prefer.

Chinese New Year

If you want a dance workshops celebrating the Chinese New Year we can do that for you. Your workshop will start with the dance teacher telling the story of the new year and how the animals came to be those chosen ones in the Zodiac. It’s a really fun story, especially for Early Years and KS1 classes.

They will then teach everyone a traditional Chinese dance using the fan props.

Read our blog for a more details account of a Chinese dance day we ran at Belmont Junior School.

Here are some examples of fans students have made for their dances…