Teaching rhythm before asking students to freestyle.

So now that I’m teaching again, I know that teaching a catalogue of moves is not enough for us to be great. So where do I start. One thing that I’ve recognised as a point that is lacking in lion dancing training is following the rhythm of the music. 

For me, that has always felt quite natural. I’ve been watching lion dancing for a long time and I also drum, so I tend to just move with the beat without really thinking about it.

But I’ve realised that isn’t necessarily obvious to someone who’s new to lion dancing.

Let’s be clear: the lion should move with the drumbeat. There are set moves and beats when we head shake and set moves and beats when we pao si but when it comes to the walking beat, it’s generally up the lion dancers to freestyle and dance however they place. 

What I’m seeing is that a lot of lion dancers are just throwing out movements without really paying attention to what the drummer is doing. And what I’m hearing especially amongst the newer dancers is that they sometimes feel lost with what moves to do during the walking beat because there are no set moves. 

My initial answer was to teach them individual moves and then string individual moves together to form tried and tested combinations. But even then i felt like something was missing when the team was practising and then i realised it’s because the timing of the moves were off. 

The answer that I’ve come up with is, it’s  more important that the dancers move the beat even if the moves are basic and repetitive. In other words, the rhythm gives the lion something to move against. Imagine a breakdancer who dances out of beat to the music, or a freestyle rapper who’s singing out of tune to the beat. It just doesn’t look and sound right. But even an amateur back up dancer who’s bopping up and down to tune or the beat can look good. 

After learning a bit of piano, it seemed obvious to me that I needed to bring lion dancing back to the same thing.

Learn to move to the beat.

So that’s what I’ve been doing.

I’ve been getting the newer students to slow everything down. We count. We practise the movements against a rhythm. We work on moving the lion high, low and somewhere in between rather than just bouncing around at whatever speed feels natural. But always against a rhythm. 

I’ve even made the more experienced dancers go backwards a little to do this. (I might argue that they’re moving forwards as I think this will aid them better). They’re used to throwing out movements much faster and more freely, but I’m asking them to slow down and make those movements fit the rhythm.

I suspect some of them found it a little frustrating because it’s not how they’ve been dancing but I’m ok with that. I’d rather everyone learn to move together at a slower tempo first and once we’re comfortable doing that, we can speed things up and introduce different rhythms without losing the connection between the lion and the drum.

I encountered two sets of problems. 

The first problem revolved around the students who knew how to dance. After going through rhythm and trying to show them newer ways to dance out individual moves, a lot for them would invariably go back to what they already knew. Good movements but random timing. 

The second problem revolved around the students who hadn’t previously danced.  I think they grasped the concept of rhythm but it’s now a question of what combinations of movements can they dance to the music. We had practised individual movements and combinations but I found that most hadn’t quite developed an eye for how they fit together, nor how to string them together on the fly.  

So I decided to give them something to dance.

I put together a sequence of movements that everyone could learn. It’s essentially a series of four-move blocks strung together into a longer routine. I’ve chosen the movements and put them against the rhythm we’re learning.

That means they don’t have to stand there wondering what to do next. They can concentrate on moving, keeping the beat and making the lion look alive.

I’ve deliberately put in combinations that I think look good. Not necessarily the most difficult movements, but movements that flow into each other and create changes in direction, height and energy.

In other words, I’m giving them a model of how I want a lion to dance. They can copy it, they can practise it, they can get comfortable with it. And hopefully, over time, those movements and that rhythm become part of them so that they’re not just doing movements but Dancing.