How the 1,000-year-old lion dance has moved with the times
Lunar New Year is the busiest time of the year for the troupes who spend months perfecting ever more daring routines. Innovations At competitions, performances are typically divided into “northern” or “southern” lion dance to standardise the judging, but there are a huge number of variations based on location, cultural background, and even a particular lion dance master, said Tsun-Hui Hung, a Taiwanese musician and academic who has written about the history of Taiwan’s lion dance for the scholarly non-profit Association of Asian Studies. Taiwanese melting pot Many Taiwanese troupes also have a distinct flavour of their own thanks to the island’s unique immigration patterns, said Wang Qing-zhong, who heads the four-generation Ching Ho Kuang Lion Dance Troupe in Taipei’s Wanhua district. As the first in his family to study lion dance, Wang’s father learned a hybrid style from the southern Guangdong and Guangxi provinces because its founding members – two military officers seeking to keep fit – created a single hybrid troupe that united styles from different provinces. The Ching Ho Kuang Lion Dance Troupe has continued the Guangdong-Guangxi tradition even though their family originally came from elsewhere in China, but Wang says a similar pattern was repeated across Taiwan as styles became “mixed up together.” This mixing and cultural exchange between lion dance troupes continue to the present day, thanks to technology.
Lion dance troupe Jin Wu Koon prepares for 100 performances for Lunar New Year
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