Disclaimer, I apologize for the length of the blog. It was a pretty big word dump as I went over my thoughts, and I didn’t do much editing since it’s serving as my notes.
1) The emotions of the dancers. This is specific to the dancers themselves and the emotions I saw before and after they had danced. While I’ve definitely experienced frustration during practice, the performance of a dance has always been positive experiences. My experience with lion dancing has always been as an art and not as a sport. This, however, was lion dancing as a sport. Everyone performed spectacularly, but there were still mistakes. Some teams got docked up to nearly 1.5 points off of their total score. Some teams didn’t get any docks. As such, there was a high level of personal emotion. Happy tears amd upset tears, hugs and cheers, frustrated crouching and nervous preparing. It served as a good reminder to me to relish my own experiences and emotions.
2) The size and coordination of the drumming / cymbal / gong team and the relationship between that team and the lion. There was almost always six people on the instrument side of things in the dances. With most of the dances, the “instrument team” was very animated. There were pauses, chants, and a lot of coordination that most of our dances don’t necessarily require. I think this contributed to how I perceived the music, which felt different in comparison to our dances. Our “organized freestyle” dance requires a partnership between the drum and the lion. Sometimes the drum cues, sometimes it’s the lion. In comparison, these structured dances had that subconscious feel that the drum was always consistent. To explain it a little better, it’s like you could feel that the drum wasn’t waiting for the lion to get ready, but rather that it was up to the lion to keep up.
3) The responsibility of the tail! Of all the dances, there was only one where the tail danced in a similar fashion to how I dance. I had a few takeaways from this. The tail definitely felt like it had more responsibilities and roles in comparison to our dances. The movements of the head felt much quicker, snappier, and erratic in the tournament dances and the tails did a good job in keeping up. Maybe this comes down to how structured and practiced these dances are, that there is less reaction involved? But on top of that, there was a lot of stacking, volleying, and climbing on obstacles. While trying to keep up with the speed of the dance, the tails also seemed responsible for managing space while on the elevated platforms, keeping the head in bounds, and basically running point on like, everything. It seemed so busy! I think this pronounced itself in the deductions; I feel like at least 60-70% of the deductions made could be traced back to a mistake made by the tail. I think this is a good example of how important the tail actually is, especially when it may feel like the opposite in some of the dances we do.
3.1) As a part two to the above point. I mentioned that one of the tails moved in a manner similar to me; with all of the responsibility the tail had to manage in the last point, being able to add extra energy and momentum to the tail is a huge task and I thought it was awesome to see. This was also the first time I saw a full dance with an “energetic tail” from the outside, close up, and in live time. My goal with animating the butt of the lion is to create invisibility through excess visibility; to give the tail enough movement that the lion looks more alive. Watching this performance, it helped me see the lines where too much movement does the opposite of my goal; you can reach a point where the energy of the tail ends up highlighting the stagnancy of the head, and that just defeats the point. There’s a lot more to consider than just shaking my butt!
4) The props. A lot of different props and items were used in the dances. I’ve seen a lot of our dances over the years, and I think we’ve used less props over the span of 12 years than each of these tournament dances used in a single dance. The props made a big impact in telling a story (which I won’t touch much on right now since that’s my next bullet), and as fun as it was, sometimes it felt excessive. Every dance used red benches and platforms to form various types of terrain, such as hills, bridges, and rocks. Nearly every dance also utilized a river in some way, which, when I asked Sifu Brinker about it, is an obstacle which represents a lions fear of water and its ability to overcome a challenge in pursuit of its goal. Some other props included a remote controlled spider, stuffed animals (like tigers and monkeys), small drums, the big lion-sized bottles of wine, and bamboo trees. One of my favourite uses of the props was using the bamboo trees as a way to hold something. Several lions used stacks to grab something out of a tree, and I thought this was a cool way of doing something like the lettuce. Oh, and one of the props was like a scroll, but it was a double sided lightsaber. So when the lion picked it up, it suddenly went foom! and then there were lightsabers coming out the sides of the lions mouth. So much fun!
5) The stories and the creativity. I touched on it a lil in the props side of things, but there was obviously a lot of creativity that went into telling the stories that were told. Some of the stories included hunting a spider that scurried out from under a bridge, rescuing a baby monkey from a tree and returning it to its parent, and fighting a tiger. As an audience member with no context (the names of the dances weren’t even revealed until the dance had finished), I often understood a lot of what was happening. This was very heavily reliant on the prop use though, I think. The stories we tell, using little more beyond lions, dragons, and buddhas, might be more difficult for the audience to follow along / understand. We as the dancing team, however, know the story and what we are portraying, and that’s what counts. I definitely like that side of things. While the use of props is fun, some of the dances definitely felt… convoluted. With one of them, there were so many props and gimmicks that I lost track of what was happening (and then they pulled out a keyboard???). The old adage of “don’t lose sight of the simple things” definitely applies here, I think. Less is more, and all that.
6) The judging. I talked a lot with Sifu Brinker about this during my Monday one on one. There were some things that totally caught me off guard. One example was the point docking that occurred during the intro / outros. As one team came onto stage, they scraped the ceiling with their flag. The dancers weren’t even in the lion yet, and there was already points being deducted. I definitely am not jealous about that side of things. It’s given me a little more appreciation for the free style we do. I think that room to breathe really gives dancers the ability to turn a dance into something a little more real? It’s hard to put to words.
7) The adaptability. I know I said that everything needs to go perfect, but I think that makes the adaptability some of the dancers exhibit much more impressive. At one point, one of the teams ended up knocking a bridge bench off of its path. The gap between the two benches that they were using as a bridge nearly tripled in size. Despite this, they were still able to stack and land on the benches accurately. For how much the teams focus on perfecting what they do, I was wondering how they would respond to something drastic that happened. And it worked well! Our freestyle dance requires the ability to adapt to what’s around you, although the stakes do feel a lot lower.
8) The stacks. The stacks were obviously a huge part of the dances, and they were super impressive too. Head stacks, volleys, single leg stacks, all that stuff. One of the stacks I noted was a type of volley that was similar to what we had done a few years ago, which involved a rotation once at the apex of the stack. This stack that was done had the lions do a headstack, and then the head kept their legs together, put them over the tails shoulders, and slipped down their back while the tail did a sharp turn. It basically made for a very sharp 180 degree turn. It seems doable? I want to toy with the idea a little bit. Another stack that I always find fascinating is, from a headstack, the head wraps their feet around the tails back and the tail bows forward. This is best used to make the lion look like it’s drinking from a river or some other water source. I can’t even imagine the core strength necessary!
9) The emotions of the lions. The dancers were very good at portraying different emotions in their lions, but the one that stood out the most I think was fear. At various points, when a dancer wanted to portray fear and the courage that follows it, they did so very well. Like, the whole lion would tremble, from the top of the head to the bottom of the feet. There were also really good portrayals of some standard emotions, like happy, sad, and mad.
I have like 4 other points, but I’ve been writing this blog for days and just want to get it out ar this point, so maybe part 2 to come?
