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.

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.

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.