>Incidently, how do you hold the head during the "breaks" in the music? Ibr> >like to end up in a low horse with the head thrust high and forward.
>i've seen some people end with the head pulled all the way down, looking
>at the floor.

Keeping with the open mouth thread...

In this position, if you freeze, is your mouth open or closed? I was taught that the Lion should not have two heads. (meaning keep the mouth open to hide your face) On the otherhand, I was told to keep the mouth closed when you go up. I deal with this by closing the mouth on quick moves and open on freezes.

What have others heard or done?

Stephen.

>When working out, practice lying-leg stances, with arms in 'Lion Head'
>position to accustom your body to this posture.

What is lying-leg stance?

is this what I call a back bow stance?

A back bow stance is front leg straight out with foot hooked at a right angle. Lean back and low so most of your weight is supported on back leg. Back leg is bent at the knee, Thigh is parallel to the floor and back foot is parallel to the front foot. Ideally, toe of front foot is line with your body and heel of the back foot but could be wider. Chest faces your front foot.

>In our drumming, the break comes after 7 star or modified 3 star (we made
>up that name) These are the "freeze" poses or Lion Vogue-ing :-)

Yes - that's when we do ours too.

>The freeze doesn't look forward but looks to the side. (Ie head turned)
>We are either crane stance (one leg) head held high looking down. (preferably
>at another lion.) Or we are in a back bow stance (very low) facing towards
>the outstreched leg and looking up with the mouth opened.

I usually end looking forward - there are 2 mini-pauses before the main break, so I look to each side during the mini-pauses (using different techniques) and then end looking forward and down either in low horse or in what we call the cat stance - like the back bow stance but the back foot is perpendicular to the front foot, front foot in line with the heel of the back foot - head snaps forward then pulled back onto shoulders looking straight ahead, mouth in "happy lion" (all the way open vertical). There's other variations too.

>Also, there is a snap of the head. (if looking right, snap to the left
>and then end up on the right)

I snap in the same direction I end up (forward lunge), pull back (horse or a jump in that direction) and quick glance opposite, then end up looking the same way I snapped (cat stance).

>Our music is (usually) synced to the dance. When ever we are about to a
>stunt, (Stacking, eating, jumping, etc) a 7 star or some variation (ie.
>break at the end) is played and the stunt will conclude at the break.
>Thus, many freeze positions occur.

Same here.

>I was taught that the Lion should not have two heads. (meaning
>keep the mouth open to hide your face) On the otherhand, I
>was told to keep the mouth closed when you go up. I deal with
>this by closing the mouth on quick moves and open on freezes.

We're told the same thing - and are taught that whenever the lion raises its head, lower yours so people don't see your face. When I'm in this position, I keep the head far forward enough that the tail almost closes around me and the head is not so much "high" as it is out - so the beard does hang down enough to cover my face from most angles.

>What is lying-leg stance?
>is this what I call a back bow stance?

Anybody have the time to put one together? It'll help these discussions out a lot!

Rob Teng wrote:
> >
> > Basic rythm (3-star?):
> > 0 ' o0 ' (repeated over and over)

If I understand this right, you hit the center of the Drum with the left hand, then immediately put your fingers on the drum, (for a count) then hit the side and hit the drum twice (left/right) then fingers/side.

What does the lion do during this portion? Is this the normal walking in a low stance? Do others have this rhythm? I'm trying to play it to myself and I don't quite get it.

On another note, can anyone think of an effective way we can exchange drum beats? I'd like to expand our repertoire. Wehave some cool testing and routine beats. Also the tape from Taiwan has some good beats.

finally, I'll take a stab at putting an HTML FAQ together. Send me items in Q&A format and I'll put it together. The problem is I don't have a site to serve it. Would anyone offer their site?

Stephen.

Last message, Chris said:
>
> >What is lying-leg stance?
> >is this what I call a back bow stance?
Also better known as "dingjima" in cantonese..

> Anybody have the time to put one together? It'll help these discussions out
> a lot!
Yeah.. i'll put in..

>On another note, can anyone think of an effective way we
>can exchange drum beats?

I'm not really a drummer, so I don't feel qualified to answer your previous question. in regards to this one though, sometimes there's just no substitute for cassette tapes and snail mail... i guess if you really wanted to take the trouble to, you could record it onto a computer .wav file and send it as an attachment to a maillist post. It's a lot of trouble though - the sound quality won't be as good and .wav files take up a *LOT* of memory.

>finally, I'll take a stab at putting an HTML FAQ together.
>Send me items in Q&A format and I'll put it together.
>The problem is I don't have a site to serve it. Would anyone
>offer their site?

Sure, my site has plenty of room - I'll put up whatever you send me. Although it may be better if someone else used their site - see, i'm about to lose my slip connection at school after I graduate in May - I'll still have an email account and this list will still be around, so I'm told, but I'll lose all my other internet access (including netscape and ftp). So until I actually get around to dishing out real money to get real internet access again, after May I'll be limited in what I can do.

>Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 16:39:30 -0400
>X-UIDL: 830664392.009
>From: Johnny Wu
>To: lowc@rohan.sdsu.edu
>Subject: hello
>
>Hi all,
>
>My name is Johnny Wu, I've been studying our family martial art
>system for 25 years (the Wu Jia Long Fong Quan)... I did some Lion
>Dane when I was younger (so my knowledge in it isn't that good) :P
>And now I'm joining this list, I hope to learn a lot from it, but
>I'll have little to input.
>
>I also have a newsletter published once a month about the Chinese
>martial arts community, u can check out e-version at our website
>at http://www.hanwei.com (it reaches about 27K hits a month, so
>if u get an error or problem to get in, please try it later).
>
>We are going to have the 1996 Han Wei National Martial Arts
>Championship on Saturday, September 28, 1996. Many top martial
>artists in the nation will be participating and we will be having
>an opening ceremony with more than 5 Lion Dance performing at
>the same time with one drum beat... If any of you on this list
>is interested in performing as well, (and of course closer to
>Cleveland), then please let me know. :)
>
>Hehehe.. Forgot to mention the newslette ris called the Han Wei
>Wushu! Newsletter (using the correct terminology for the
>Chinese martial arts). And the tournament is going to be at
>Cleveland State University's Woodling Gym here in Cleveland, Ohio.
>More information will be available at the website or email me.
>
>That's all folks!
>
>
>--
>Look at the wonders of the nature and you will feel insignificant
>Look at the inventions of the humans and you will feel insignificant
>Only when merge your body and soul into the nature, you will discover
>wisdom, love, peace, intelligence, power to overcome ur obstacles...

Guys -

Is it possible to move the List Server to a Digest Format? If you're not familiar with this, the server would collect all postings over a period of time (1/2 day? 1 day?), and then consolidate into one mailing. The better ones also place indexes of the subject line on the top, and some really fancy ones even put numbers and sort the messages. This would cut the number of emails each person gets to a manageable size. (I don't know about you, I get dozens and dozens of emails each day. After going on vacation for a week, sometimes I am greeted by hundreds of messages on my return!)

What do you think?

-Robert

On Wed, 24 Apr 1996, Stephen Chew wrote:
> I've been wondering what do you all do with respect to
> the Mouth?
> 1) Where do you hold the Lion?
> 2) In a horse stance what does the mouth do?
>
> Stephen,

You don't like to leave the mouth just hanging? I leave the mouth hanging usually for one or more of three reasons... 1) to show that the lion is in a happy mood (you're right though you shouldn't leave it flapping around, what I do is hold the mouth back towards me so it doesn't flap around, do you know what I mean? 2) I also leave it open to see some of my surroundings (only for a few seconds though) and 3) if our crew is small for the day and I have to do a whole performance myself, then once I get tired the mouth starts to flap around the more tired I get.

As far as holding the lion head, I think that it is mainly personal preference. I personally hold the head with my left hand on the bar and put my right hand half way on the bar and half on the mouth (this way I can have some extra support while still being able to open the mouth). I must say though that as far a projecting the head out, it is all muscle. To do this you should concentrate on your forearms, however you can, and some on your upper body, I think pushups are adequate.

Brandon

I just got a request from a professional storyteller living in Guam for stories about the lion dance that would be suitable to entertain young children. There is a big Chinese population down there and he thinks it'll be a good thing to use in his performances. So if anyone knows of any stories (they don't have to be that good - he can embellish them) either post them to the list, or send them to me and I'l get them to him.

Thanx,
Chris