Lion dance

I’ve been meaning to talk about lion dancing for a while.

old lions at Melbourne Uni

On Sunday, we went to Glen Waverley, a suburb at the end of a train line (so about an hour and a half from home), to watch a friend’s team perform, and to pick up some tricks along the way.
We weren’t the only one with the latter idea, as we ran into two other lion dance teams (one of them in uniform even) and at least one other kung fu school’s sifu.

Kung fu politics. You don’t want to know. Or maybe you do? Stay tuned, as this will feature heavily in the sequel to Enter The Parrot /BSP

The team was good. And I mean, really good. Despite the rain and overall adverse weather conditions, they did an excellent performance on jongs, huge metal poles that a lion can jump up, down and around. I didn’t take many photos, but we filmed some of their rehearsals and of course the main performance.

Lion dancing is a very traditional art, and one that has seen some revival,a t least in our part of the country, in recent years. More and more teams seem to appear, not all of them connected to kung fu schools.

Traditionally, a lion dance is the expression of a kung fu school’s spirit, its values, and of course its techniques. But it’s also just a celebration of tradition and the joy of jumping around with a mask on.

Tomorrow, our own, much less awesome, team returns to training, and I expect our prime team to try out some of the more exciting tricks.

new lion heads

If you’re in the Melbourne area and would like to see us perform (even though we’re not spectacular), we’ll be performing on Wednesday the 25th at 3pm in the old Melbourne Gaol.
Come and say hello to the girl that brings character to the yellow lion’s behind.

Or, uh, just come and watch. I hear there’s free food around, too.