Lion Art really is the expression of the lion as being a life creature.
The physicality behind it, it takes quite a bit to do it.
No matter if it's competition or if it's just a random performance on a Tuesday,
we all love it so much and I feel like that's what makes it really special.
I'm the chief instructor, also known as Shufu, of the Zhang Yikung Fu Association.
So I started in Chinese martial arts when I was 14 years old.
This is our 30th year teaching in traditional martial arts and also lion dance here in Madison.
Martial arts schools traditionally are linked with lion dance culture in itself
and they help celebrate the new years.
When we start a performance, we always like click the rim and it's really loud.
Everyone starts paying attention.
Without the music, there's no dancing.
The Sarping style that my teacher, Chansu Ki, from Singapore teaches us is really important
because it's a beautiful style. The music is very festive.
The style itself has prescribed beats.
We can't modify what that particular beat is because there's a meaning behind the beat
and there's a movement that the lion does with a beat.
There's eight emotions that it shows. There's seven different postures, different ways of raising the head.
And all of those things have to be taught very carefully because a small little detail can make or break
the way that the structure looks or how the art is performed.
And it takes a long time to refine that particular movement to trick the audience into believing
that's a real creature rather than somebody under the lion.
All of those are emotions that you're supposed to make the lion show through the big heads,
which is very difficult. That's why it's not just a matter of blinking the eyes or moving the mouth.
It's actually moving the whole body to express that sort of particular emotion.
So you kind of have this particular area here that you're going to see.
And then when you open the mouth, you can see through the mouth.
But besides that, you can't really see what the eyes are seeing,
which is difficult because a lot of times when the crowd comes over to play with the lion,
they look at the lion, they're going like this in front of the eyes.
The person has no idea what's going on. They can see that there's feet down here,
but they have no idea what the person is doing in front of them.
I can see the person's legs in front of me, and then everything else is black.
Really going backwards. I got you right here. Ready?
Like that, there you go.
There's a lot of two-person work, right? So you have a head and you have a tail,
and they have to communicate with each other and trust each other
because there's a lot of tricks that they can do.
If you want to do fun tricks like throwing people over your head or having people standing in your legs.
The more you trust each other, the more you understand each other,
the friendship grows and the more fun you have, and then the energy comes up.
Usually for the viewers, we try to go with a story about the big-headed monk
and how he plays with the lion and the lion.
Overcomes several different obstacles, just like we do in daily life,
and ultimately there's a big payoff in which he grabs some lettuce,
which the lion is an agent of transformation.
So he eats lettuce, but he spits out fortune.
And when he spits out fortune, the idea is that he's being able to spread it to the community
or trying to share it with everybody.
We do grab the tangerines and we give them out as gifts to the audience.
And every time it gives the gift out, it's kind of like the lion is wishing wealth.
We want the audience to have fun and really enjoy.
If you watch the performances, a lot of times you just see the kids light up,
so they usually are like fascinated by it.
Some of the reactions we've had from the crowd are just how much fun and excitement it was,
especially hearing the live drums and music you played.
The concept of equality and equity is really important for our team,
and everybody and our team understands that, and they all help each other.
Honestly, I think the main thing I want an audience to take away from lion dance
is the enjoyment of the show and kind of a celebration of culture.
We have like a lot of people from Southeast Asia that will come up to us and say,
oh, watching your show just reminded me of being back at home and missing it so much
is so great to be able to see it here in Madison, Wisconsin.
Thank you.