Malaysian Media and Culture Presentation: Lion Dance

Before I start this blog writing, I would like to thanks to my lecture Dr. Carmen, Ms. Ezzati and Ms. Raja for giving us the knowledge on the arts and performances. I am truly grateful and I do learn a lot through this subject.

So during the first few of the class, Dr. Carmen has given us an assignment brief and ask us to choose one of the topic for our presentation and research. My teammate and I started to think what to do, but as we want something challenging and fun with, then we decided to choose Lion Dance as our topic.

We have done a lot of research on Lion Dance, only I feel ashamed because as a Chinese, I don't really understand that much about Lion Dance yet I just know it is a very fun performances and it brings out the feeling of Chinese New Year. I only realize how great the Malaysia's Lion Dance is and they even won the world championship in Lion Dance competition. Besides, I learn differences directions of the Lion Dance histories and I only noticed that Lion Dance costume was used during the period of post Qing-Dynasty and pre Ming-Dynasty as disguise in the forest to move around from one place to another place. There are a lot of thing I have explored through this research and these is not the end yet. I really appreciate that I able to put myself as a researcher perception to find out the entire story of Lion Dance through this research assignment.

After we have done our research, my teammate and I are ready for preparation of the presentation. At first, we have decided to perform the Lion Dance during our presentation, our plan get stuck because we have no idea how to borrow a Lion Dance costume and the music instrument such as drum, cymbal and gong. However, we didn't not just give up for these, instead our desire to perform the Lion Dance getting stronger and stronger because we all have the same goal for this presentation, "we must do the best of it". So we started to spread our word to find the clue to get these equipment. Thankfully, our classmate Pei Nie give us the clue to borrow the Lion Dance from the UTAR LION DANCE CLUB. Unfortunately, the club has disbanded. Luckily, we still able to contact the ex-chairman of the club, Roshan Jay to teach us some movement of the Lion Dance.

After we have the Lion Dance, the condition is extremely bad. The paint has gone faded; the fur is dirty; the controller rope inside the Lion Head is not functioning and all the Lion Dance is very dirty and ashes. No choices, my team and I decided to clean it up perfectly for our presentation. So we started to clean and fix the Lion Dance costume.

We fix the lion dance string that control the eyes and ears movement of the Lion Dance. Although we have no experiences in it, but we still D.I.Y ourselves. Besides, we painted the part where the color has faded. At this moment, we all feel very sad and disappointed because this Lion Dance costume has abandoned many years in the store room and nobody want to take care of it. This Lion Dance is only 5 years old but it's condition looks like more than 10 years old. After awhile, we finally made it like a new one and it looks more attractive and colorful. We are like bringing back his life and ready to show the world it's new look. We are very proud of our work and we are ready and excited to perform for the presentation.

Thanks to Roshan Jay, we able to learn and knew a lot of Lion Dance style and taught us some taboos during the performing of Lion Dance. For an example, we are not allow to touch Lion's eyes and the horn as a respect ritual toward the Lion Dance. Besides, we can't touch the reflection mirror on the forehead of the Lion Dance because they believe it is uses to scare away the devil.

As I play the role as a Lion Tail, I only realize how suffer and tiring to operate a Lion Tail. I have to squad down in half (horse riding stand) throughout the performance. I truly admire to those Lion Dance performer because to become a professional Lion Dancer, you really have to train a lot and put a lot of effort within it. And these make me more appreciate and respect the Lion Dance art.

I started to discuss with my Lion Dance partner, Johnny Choy Wai Hong to brainstorm on how to make this Lion Dance more alive and more realistic. Even though we have only one days to practice. Soon, we keep on researching for the Lion Dance tutorial and video and we found some of it which is look interesting. But when we try to practice to movement, it is tougher than we thought. I only understand why most young people don't really wanted to learn Lion Dance anymore because they have no enough determination to train hard.

In short, I feel happy and fun to have a chance to play as a Lion Dancer. Even though is just happen in 2 days but it means a lot to me. Besides, these activities have increase my knowledge so much and my respect towards the creation of these arts. I hope I able to get in touch with another art forms and play a role within it.