Practicing for Chinese New Year Event

Time flies as arrow, we just keep practicing our dragon dance and lion dance for the coming Chinese New Year events.

Chinese New Year Event at Grand Shanghai Restaurant Singapore

Talking about lion dance performances for opening ceremonies, other than the basic lion dance skills and techniques that we have acquired, there are much more things that require us to take note.Examples are excessive props on the limited stage size..one of the great challenge as great care have to be taken to avoid any accidents..the props might be fagile..the stage may not be firm enough to accomodate big baffalos like us.

醒狮点睛

随着时代文明与进步, 现代的狮子点睛仪式可说比以前简单得多了.
为狮子点睛的人士, 多是地方首长或社会名流. 点睛仪式有时也在武馆举行.从前的点睛开光仪式非常隆重, 大都选择在山林里举行, 为狮子主持点睛仪式的人士, 多是德高望重的武林前辈或高僧.点睛仪式就等于一个孩子的诞生一样, 狮子点睛后, 便有了新的生命, 可以为人消灾除害, 驱邪镇妖, 又可为商家呈祥献福, 带来财运.

所谓 “点睛”, 是用毛笔以朱砂点在狮子上的天灵、眼睛、鼻子、嘴巴、舌头、耳朵、狮角、狮头、狮身及狮脚.点完之后, 在狮子内的`舞狮者即舞动狮子, 做出洗眼、抹鼻、擦耳等等的动作. 所有的程序一样样做好后, 狮子还要拜 “四门” 以及拜 “五路财神”, 然后表演出林、出洞、望月等动作.

Lion Dance Opening for Yahoo! Chinese New Year Event

Our last stop for tonight:-Lion Dance performance for Yahoo Singapore's Lunar New Year Event held at Mandarin Oriental Hotel.Our Lion Dance comrades.

Plucking Green at Singapore Cricket Club

For every Lion Dance Clubs, Chinese New Year is our peak period...the only time of the year rushing from one location to another, forgoing our loved ones, our meals our families...just for our passion....lion & dragon dances.
This evening, we are proud to be engaged to present our professional 'Plucking of the Green' for Singapore Cricket Club.'Plucking of the green' is the highlight for Lion Dance performance, be it during the Lunar New Year or the Opening Ceremony of business concerns. Zero mistake is allow for 'plucking of the green' as a minor mistake may be critical.

Swift, professional, firm, sharp and stable is the few words I always instilled in the mind of my comrades. !My dear daddy was engaged for one of the fringe activities by providing Chinese Calligraphy services.

Some Special Green in Lion Dance

The setting of the ‘Green’ (青) in Lion Dance performance have many types and patterns, for related opening ceremony or Chinese New Year, the ‘Green’ (青) for Chinese restaurant was commonly set in ‘Crab Green’ --蟹青, which related to their business (Crab is one of the popular Chinese Cuisine).For Supermarket wise, we use “Five Luck Coming to You” (五福临门), for rice merchandiser or warehouse companies which not welcoming the rats that always spoilt their good stocks, we usually using “Snake Green” (蛇青) because rats always scared snakes.

There are lot more unique Greens in lion dance performance which you should be seldom seen them.

This is ‘Cheers with the Deity’ (八仙敬酒)Encounter the Hero under the Moon (月下访英雄)One of the very unique and hardly seen Green --- “9 Segment Formation” (九子连环青)

Advance Level Lion Dance

In advance level of lion dance performance, means more interesting stuffs to be seen, thus the props using in lion dance performance will be more complex. The most common performance was lion dancing on the wooden poles, in Chinese is called 梅花桩 which means ‘Poles of Plum Blossom. It was commonly seen in the present lion dance competitions.

Chinese pottery chair is one of the prop.

On Chinese bench.
Even on n Chinese Claypot! Haahaa! I will tell you the story about lion dance in Chinese Claypot in my future posting.
The even more advance level: Using combinations of different props!

Plucking the Green in Lion Dance . 采青

To make the performance of plucking the green in lion dance much more interesting, the ‘Green’ (or the “food” for the lion) had been designed in various formations. The design of the ‘Green’s formation is also used to test the skills of the lion dancers. There were many type of ‘Green’ Formations and given in many different names.
"五福临门青"(Five Prosperity Green)is one of the common Green formations in various commercial events.
"仙人指路青"(Deity's Guidance Green)
"蜈蚣青"(Centipede Green)
"北斗七星阵" (Seven Northern Stars Formation)

Plucking the Green in Lion Dance . 采青

Usually, after the lion dance performance for either Chinese New Year or opening ceremony, the related party will pay us the fees, other than events booking.

In traditional and standard lion dance way, the payment will put in the Chinese Red package (红包袋) and tie with green vegetables and then put them on the floor or hang them on bamboo .
All of us see this ‘Lion’ as a live animal; hence we let it ‘eat’ its ‘food’ in an animal’s habit, which was the reason. At the end of the performance, the lion will ‘eat’ it ‘food’, the name given of this ‘food’ is called “青” in Chinese Character, in English is called “Green” while we translate directly.

In pure stage lion dance performances we may not see the lion do any ‘food eating action’, but it will happen commonly during Chinese New Year events and Opening Ceremony.

The ‘food eating action’ in lion dance performance in Chinese word is called “采青”, means “Plucking the Green”, we believe this will bring lucks to everyone especially the related parties.

Big Head Doll with Lion Dance

In carnival type of events, lion dancing performance will be walk together with wealth god and big head doll. Big head doll which is a lion dance member that worn a big head mask with a smiling face that holding a Chinese fan and playing a role that like a clown to create some atmosphere in the event.

Happy New Year!

Time fly as arrow, today is first day of 2010!
After yesterday’s celebration, you can found that the decoration of the street and shopping centers are changing to Chinese New Year themes, many shops was selling Chinese New Year stuffs.Talking about Chinese New Year, for those in the Chinese Cultural related industries, which providing lion dance, dragon dance and related entertainment and merchandise will be having the busies period starting from this month January and February.

Northern Lion Dance. 北狮

Since lion dance is a culture of Chinese and developed since from ancient China, it can be divided in northern type (北狮) and southern type (南狮).
Not like Southern Lion Dance, the performers of the Northern Lion Dance usually need 3 persons besides the percussion team to play for the background ‘music’, which 2 person doing the lion dance and one person play the role as a warrior.
The rhythm of the drum beat for Northern Lion Dance was slower than Southern Lion Dance, and some of the music instruments were smaller as well.

Lion Dance and Mei Hua Zhuang (梅花桩)

To do the lion dance, you definite need to went through the basic foot job steps of Kung Fu training, usually is the ‘ma bu’ (马步), because this is the most important basic requirement in doing lion dance yet follow by how good you coordinate with your partner. In advance Kung Fu foot job steps training, we need to do our basic step posing on top of the wooden poles (木桩)with about the palm size thickness which start from the height about 1 foot height, and these poles were called Mei Hua Zhuang (梅花桩).
In higher level, these Mei Hua Zhuang (梅花桩) poles could be in about 5 foots to about 12 foots!

Since lion dance is Chinese martial art with performance criteria, doing lion dance on the wooden poles (nowadays all of us was using metal based poles) is a very interesting art.

Lion Dance and Huang Fei Hong Films

Talking about ‘Wong Fei Hong’ (黄飞鸿) film (or Huang Fei Hong), other than ‘Wong Fei Hong’ film was act by Jet Li (李连杰), for those who near my age or elder people, they sure know ‘Kuan Tak-Hing’ (关德兴) who acted as Wong Fei Hong’ (黄飞鸿) in the films from 50s to 70s or 80s.
If you known this, I bet you sure know the best ‘Bad Guy’ in the films, which is Sek Kin (石坚).

In my memory, almost all ‘Wong Fei Hong’ films, you sure see lion dances; I think the popularity of these films also made lion dances became well known Chinese cultural items around the world, hence whether it acted by Kuan Tak-Hing (关德兴) or Jet Li (李连杰), most of us sure think about ‘Wong Fei Hong’ while doing lion dance, or either think about ‘Wong Fei Hong’ while seeing lion dance performance, it just my personal feeling for today.

Lion Dance . 醒狮表演

Lion Dance is traditional Chinese Cultural. It was commonly seen in Chinese New Years and various opening ceremony, the welcoming ceremony of important VIP in the events and more.Due the Kung Fu movie had been became popular in the world, everyone know what is lion dance and especially Chinese sure commonly seen it a lot in ‘Wong Fei Hong’(黄飞鸿) film.

I think the more impressive version for the younger generation, should be the ‘Wong Fei Hong’ film which act by Jet Li (李连杰) and the film named “Once Upon China”, which this film in Chinese named “黄飞鸿”, using the name of one of famous Chinese Kung Fu Master directly.

Stilt Walker

Stilt Walker is someone who uses a special made wooden stick tight on his / her foot and then walks on the crowd to increase the event’s entertaining value and atmosphere.We had commonly see stilt walker worn some theme related costume and walk in the related area to woo the crowd, I guess we may not know what a professional stilt walker can do other than just doing their ‘cat walk’ in the crowd.

Look! They can do something different!And more!

Lion Dance

Lion Dance definitely is an art that involve physical stamina, the coordination skill with your partner in the lion dance movement, the choreography design of the lion dance and etc.

Lion Dance

Lion Dance is one of traditional Chinese custom that commonly use during Chinese New Yearin China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.

Other than Chinese New Year event, you can see Lion Dance performance during product launching and various events in Asia country.

Hi everyone! Thanks for visiting our blog!
Let me introduce myself, I am Edwin Tan, who is Adviser , Choreographer and Chief Instructor of Pho Leng Lion Dance Instruction Centre.