Lions Are Still Dancing
Updated: Feb 10, 2021
Lion Dance is still around, but how exactly are they surviving and holding on to tradition?
Is Lion Dance still surviving in this current era?
In today's society, lion dance wasn’t as popular back in the days, where people would be much more religious and interested in such performance to mainly the Chinese people during the festive seasons “Chinese New Year”.
In fact, lion dance is becoming increasingly endangered, as there are fewer and fewer people every year joining troupes. It's getting harder to recruit new members, and there is only one person in Singapore left making lion dance costumes using traditional methods (Parker, 2019). Many troupes opt to buy cheaper factory-made ones.
Watch this short clip on Singapore's Lion Dance costume maker, his hardships, and how he intends to pass this tradition down the line.
(Parker, 2019)
Issues troupes face
1. Lack of Commitment
In 2016, Mr Alvin Choe, 40, the public relations officer for the Nam Sieng Dragon and Lion Dance Activity Centre said:
Without the youngsters, they don’t have enough people to take over older people who originally did the exciting and intriguing jumps and stunts (Wong, 2016).
While there is an increase in demand for lion dance performances, there are fewer youngsters to join the troupes. How would they meet the demand of these audiences? Worse still, how would lion dance troupes be able to survive in the long term without having enough people to perform?
Other priorities
Nowadays, parents want their kids to focus on their studies. They face time constraints and feel that the income from each performance isn't commensurate to the time and effort to train.
Keeping It Alive
One way Singapore keeps lion dance alive is through school-based troupes. Students in certain institutions can join lion dance clubs as their Co-curricular Activity.
This helps to expose the dance form to youths and incentivize commitment.
At the same time, other troupes are making an effort to be multi-racial.
For example, Teng Yang dance troupe has 2 Indian members who play instruments and perform alongside their Chinese partners. They're starting out young too! 13 & 14 years-old non-Chinese volunteers took part in the Chinese new year celebrations in Bukit Merah (Daud, 2018).
Lion Dance in Media
Not only did the lion dance community try to bring lion dance directly to the younger generation, it also approaches the community indirectly through popular media.
The Lion Men is a film series produced by Jack Neo, focused on two lion dance troupes challenging one another. In a part of the film, there was a conflict of changing the traditional movement of lion dance to mixing it with hip hop.
In an interview, he mentioned the importance of lion dance history in Singapore as well as how not many people in the current generation appreciate this art form, hence, him producing this film to portray the life of a lion dancer and the traditions of it(Resorts World Sentosa, 2014, 0:07-0:41).
References
Daud, S. (2018, February 20). Lion dance troupes in S’pore becoming more multi-racial. Mothership. https://mothership.sg/2018/02/spore-lion-dance-indian-performers/
Parker, P. (2019, February 7). Lunar New Year: Meet “the last” lion dance costume maker. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-47149138
Resorts World Sentosa. (2014, January 27). The Lion Men Behind the Scenes with Jack Neo [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Yi3p3RjYuh4&list=UL_CrmpTy7fJI&index=469&ab_channel=ResortsWorldSentosa
Wong, S. Y. (2016, February 20). Lion dance troupes seeking new blood. The Straits Times. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/lion-dance-troupes-seeking-new-blood
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