And that’s a wrap for another new year’s season of lion dancing. This year’s celebrations felt particularly long and I suppose it was much helped by the fact that day 1 fell on a Saturday and day 15 on a Saturday. That makes 3 sets of weekends to officially celebrate the period not withstanding the extra events that were held outside this.

So what has been happening? It’s been crazy busy here in Sydney with lion dance action everywhere. I managed to catch a few other teams’ performance which was wonderful. I really like how every team has something different. A different drumming style, a different dancing style, some with dragons, some teams using props like high poles and jongs, some mascots like the God of Wealth, dragon mascots and others mixing their shows with their kung fu. It’s quite refreshing to see for me. For us at Dragon Style Kung Fu, we had a big headed Buddha to join in the lion dancing, as well as a dragon ribbon dance for one of our gigs. The Dai Tou Fut was actually quite fun to play. There was lots of freedom to interact with the lions and tease the crowd and I think best of all, just acting plain silly. I think he’s also a nice segue for the in between performances as light comedic relief such as when everyone is setting up benches or packing away scrolls. During the performances, he’s useful to help direct lions to where they need to go and even cover up for them if need be like if they’ve dropped a lettuce all whilst looking like it’s part of the show. The only problem (which is minor) for me is that I can’t jump into the lions or spend time jamming away on the instruments. To help me prepare for playing the Buddha, it got me watching heaps of videos of other players and taking the elements that I really enjoyed and trying to incorporate that in. It also got me looking to other performance arts like Noh and kabuki and mime to see how they choreograph their moves which was cool. I’ve always tended to only watch other lion dancing groups and borrowing elements that I liked so this was refreshing. I think there’s potentially a lot we might be able to borrow from other performance arts. Alas, in the case of the Buddha, it really was just watching other lion teams where I drew most of my inspiration.

17.02.24 Trung Han Qun Lion Dance and Yun Yee Tong Lion and Dragon Dance. I managed to catch THQ and YYT roaming around Cabramatta on Saturday. It’s always fun to watch performances in Cabramatta on Chinese new year period. There’s plenty of firecrackers, plenty of lion dancing groups around (Jing Yee were also out and about but I missed them) and it’s more or less continuous action for most of the day.

24.02.2024 Rhodes. No lion dancing but it was really good to see the community come out to participate in Rhodes’ lunar new year event. There were lots of groups performing on stage, they had this awesome face changing performer. Still impresses me every time he performs. I have to admit, I have looked up how they do it but there’s a dearth of information on how they do. I guess some things are left to the imagination and that means it’ll be forever an enjoyment when I watch him perform. On the topic of why Rhodes is up here, they had a dragon parade. The owner of the dragon had stitched together a mega long body that takes 100 people to bring it to life and he was busy beating out a nice little tune with his solo multiple drum set up. I think it’s time Cabramatta get in on the parade dragon bandwagon. I think the community will easily get involved and it’ll be magnificent.

24.02.2024 Cabramatta lunar new year festival. Where else in Sydney do you find a lion dancing program that stretches the whole day. There were a few little stages scattered around but I think for most people, the action was just in front of Freedom Plaza where Jing Yee, THQ, Qing Fong Lion Dance team and Dragon Style Kung Fu each had a one hour set to wow the crowds. I think it was a great initiative from the organisers’ perspective. I do think that it’s amazing that there are that many teams in the Cabramatta area and the cool thing is, everyone is doing something a little different.

I didn’t get to see Jing Yee perform live but I did see some of their videos and they did an amazing Jong performance (I think it’ll be the first Cabra area team to do so), a super high pole performance with some dangerous stunts, dragon dancing and lots of lions dancing. I caught a bit of Qing Fong’s performance with great use of props and what I can only imagine to be a carp leaps through the dragon gate routine where they managed to combine a lion and dragon set together. It was pretty cool to watch.

Then it was us at Dragon Style Kung Fu to rock the joint. I think we did a good job by the look of the crowd. We had a few solo lion performances with the old guys, the less old guys and the kids all joining in. Big, old big head headed Buddha made an appearance once or twice but we got severely beaten back by the lion a few times. We also got to showcase our dragon style kung fu (lung ying kuen; it’s a Hakka art with similarities in principle and appearance to some other Hakka arts like bak mei, and southern mantis kung fu). And two of the parents came out and did an epic ribbon dragon dance set. I’ve tried it and it’s no easy feat spinning them around let alone making it look good. We had a jolly good time and I hope if you’re reading this and watched our performance, you had a good time too.

I must say, I missed THQs late night set but from the videos, it was lots of LED lights!

That’s a wrap for 2024 Lunar new year. We’ll see you again at moon festival.