Hello, I subscribed to the liondance mailing list, but I haven't got any messages yet.

Could somebody tell me if my message at least got through? Thanks

Paul Skrypichayko,

It's been very quiet, seems I'm not the only one who 's very busy at the moment... Don't worry, your subscription has been processed, you're on the list.

Your friendly list owner,

Rob (Exile in Paris ;-) Teng

PS Chris, got the intro message, will re-edit slightly, so it can be the mesg that people get on subscribing, that way people like Paul will know it worked..

Hi, thanks for your responses guys.

Do people generally post small biographies when they join? Well just in case, here is a little bit of info about me. I am a university student from Edmonton, Canada, and I have been practicing martial arts for almost 4 years. Mostly hung gar and hapkido. I am very interested in lion dancing and all other things that are connected with kung fu.

Does anybody know where I can get really cheap lion dance equipment?

Also nice to see a fellow hung kuen guy.

Thanks

Paul Skrypichayko,

Hi everyone,

I'm happy that the list is staying alive. =) This is an invaluable source for Liondance and I have learned the most through this list. Thanks to all of you and thanks to everyone who is making this new hosting possible. =)

My University Troupe just got a big allotment of money for constructing our own equipment. We have so far bought 1" diameter PVC piping, Paper Mache Kit, chicken wire, a whole lot of cloth, and a whole lot of paints. Do any of you have recommendations in making a Lion head? Oh...we're going to make the Lion in blue, black, and silver in honor of our school colors.

Oh and about my Troupe (to reintroduce myself), I started the Brandeis University Xiao3 Shan1 Liondance Troupe three years ago. We have about 25 active members performing around Boston, Massachusetts. After only three years, our equipment is starting to wear out so we're making new ones and repairing the old ones. We're self taught (with no real teacher, sadly) from films, books, and our own imagination. Our theme is Fire since we breathe fire and since we cause trouble with the local police all the time and we plan to petition for a fireworks license with City Hall.

-Paul Hung

Hi Paul,

> My University Troupe just got a big allotment of money for constructing our
> own equipment. We have so far bought 1" diameter PVC piping, Paper Mache
> Kit, chicken wire, a whole lot of cloth, and a whole lot of paints. Do any
> of you have recommendations in making a Lion head?

Making your own head from scratch is quite an undertaking. Since you have an old one, you at least have a base to work from.

I don't know of any diagrams out there but there are some pictures in Dr. Hu's "Lion Dance explained" book. I also saw an old lion dance tape from Taiwan that showed how to make a head. Not very detailed but still pretty informative.

> Our theme is Fire since we
> breathe fire and since we cause trouble with the local police all the time
> and we plan to petition for a fireworks license with City Hall.

Go get-em. Tell the list how this goes.

Stephen.

Hey Paul.

Just wondering, what condition is your head in?

Making your own lion head is a very complicated process - if you got good at it, you'd probably have all of America calling you up for orders! Not saying that it's impossible, but it's something not too widely known (and kept that way by the factories in Asia).

I would suggest just stripping off the old papier mache from your existing lion, reapplying a new layer, and then repainting it. If your frame is still intact, this should work pretty well. Even if your frame isn't intact, you can always reinforce it, as long as the bamboo isn't broken, in which case you'll have to take off that particular strip altogether (it's not worth saving).

Afterwards, you can get creative in applying new hair, sequins, or anything else you want. But if the back of your head has a poem from when it was blessed, I suggest that you keep that area because it's pretty important.

Hope you figure out a solution soon.

See ya.

willyle@bigfoot.com

>Paul,
>Your coming through loud and clear. Pretty quiet here now.Were you at the
>Dragon challenge this weekend. We were there, would have liked to bump in to
>you. We did demo at beginning of tourney.
>My daughter won three gold medals, I was very proud of her.
>Write soon
>Neil Mcritchie

Hi Neil, nice to see you again. I didn't know that so many of the kung fu ppl I've met are also on the liondance list. Well, congratulations to your daughter on her performance. Lets talk in private email to save bandwith.

Thanks

Paul Skrypichayko,

Hi fellow lion dancers,

Just doing my bit to keep this list a bit more active...

Paul, to make a lion head is not easy but not imposible. If you are really keen, you can strip your old lion head and follow the frame work. But I do agree with the others in that it will more practicle to repair your old head since you got most of the material handy. Anyway, do keep us update on your progress.

As for your theme of 'fire', I just remember being told once that the lion is afraid of fire, and should not use its mouth to carry it(as well as weapons). This is where the big headed buddha comes in and helps the lion with the 'fire'. Anyway, like to hear more comments on this from the group.

A bit of news..., the 3rd International Lion Dance Federation Judging Course will be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from the 14th to the 18th of October. The course will end with a written and oral test. I am representing the lion dance organization of my town to attend it, and will try to write more on this when I get back.

Just last week I manage to help organise a flourescent lion dance performance. It uses the same concept of the flourescent dragon, where by the whole lion is painted with flourescent colour. The tail and the pants are similarly coloured too. We borrowed ideas from the flourescent dragon team that performed in the recent world champs in that we made flourescent masks and clothing for the musicians. The poles and musical instrument was also similarly painted. We used a shorter poles (no wires) because of the smaller stage and we painted the surface of the pole's plate in bright flourescent colour to ease the dancers. The dancers said that jumping was easier than in normal light because the plates was completely lit up. The audience seemed to appreciate the effort, but we also found that there were still many things that we needed to improve on. One of the most important thing is that the amount, intensity and direction of the flourescent light source needs to be increased (we only used 4 tubes, 3 from above and 1 at the side, and most of the lower half of the lion was quite dim.) The flourescent lion is actually quite suitable to make the lion dance more 'entertaining' when used for performance in small and dark places.

Well, that's all form me now. Hope to hear from you all, and happy lion dancing.

George,

> Just last week I manage to help organise a flourescent lion dance
> performance.
>
> [Description deleted]
>
> Well, that's all form me now. Hope to hear from you all, and happy lion
> dancing.
>
> George,

Hi George,

Great post. Do keep us posted on the judging conference. I am curious what the Malaysians use for scoring.

Also, does the flourescent lion do a choy chang? Did you do any special music like the dragon does? Just curious.

Stephen.

Hi Steven,

>Great post. Do keep us posted on the judging conference.
>I am curious what the Malaysians use for scoring.

Well, the most popular rules used here are the rules set by the International Dragon & Lion Dance Association, the older version which can be found in Dr. Hu's book.

>Also, does the flourescent lion do a choy chang? Did you
>do any special music like the dragon does? Just curious.

We did just a normal pole chang routine, and did not use any special music. The performance itself is just a normal lion dance on poles performance, the only difference was tha it was done in the dark and we paid more attention to all the other musicians and all the props used.

George,

Hi George. I like your idea for bright flourescent lighting on the pole routine. But you mentioned matching masks for the musicians. What do those look like?

Hey, it's around mid-October now. Have you heard anything on the release of the 1998 world championships vcd?

Willy

Hi,

This message sends to all lion dancers and subscriber. I am interested in searching for a pair of Northern & Southern Lions, drum, and a book that show how to do the opening eyes or wakening lion ceremony. I live in Washington states, the Northwest region of the US. Please refer me to these location that I could buy. Our budget is $1500-$2000. How about for a pair of cymbals, gong, and drum? What is available out there and the price?

Please reply.

Thank you,

Viet Thuan

Hi Thuan,

My name is Paul, and I think I can help you out. My friend's father is friends with a lion factory owner in Fatsan, China, and he can get us really good deals. Fatsan has a really good reputation for southern lions. My friend is still getting all of the final details on prices, but it looks like we could get something to easily fit your budget. The entire package includes:

lion head
lion tail
pants (2 pairs)
shoes (2 pairs)
drum
gong
cymbals

We have looked all over HK, Singapore, Malaysia, and China. So far, this is the best quality, and the cheapest price anywhere.

Please write back if you want more info. I will try and get pictures and other details for you.

Thanks

Paul Skrypichayko

Hi all,

got this message in my guestbook, anyone in the area that can help this person out? Seems like a nice thing to do to get some attention for your group.

> Name: Pamela
> Email: happyplam@hotmail.com
> Page signed: http://www.et.tudelft.nl/~wingchun/Lionguests.html
> Note:
>Hi! I am a student from appleby college which located in
>toronto. Our school would like some chinese dancers or group
>to perform at chinese new year. I want to know if there's
>any chinese dancers or group that can perform for our school
>Please reply this mail as soon as possible.
>Thank you
>Pamela.

Take care,
Rob

Hi this is a new mailing list in singapore i hope that all of you can support us.

To accept this invitation, please use the "Reply" function of your e-mail program and send back a blank message

If you have questions, please feel free to contact the moderator of this group at liondance@usa.net

Hi all,

Any of you guys know what to think of this? I've heard of competition between lion dance groups, but not mailinglists..Now would this mean our list is obsolete (and we all went through the trouble to create it for nothing), or do they have a dead born on their hands??

I can't see the need for two lists...

Take care,
Rob Teng

BTW I've been told in Paris the dancing at new years is quite an experience, ... I know it's another couple of months, but I'll let you know!

Hello to all new members. This is francis from singapore.

Welcome to s'pore-liondance e-mail !

Just to answer some who are "not happy" to see why i create this e-mail address. The reason why i create this mailling list is not for competiting with any of the same list over the world.

I just feel that there is a need to have one in singapore is because :

1)when some liondance activities happening in singapore we can send through this e-mail so as to inform each other.

2) i always find that singapore liondancers are not as active as what I have seen in the other mailling list. So i would like to gather all the liondancer in singapore and at the same time we can keep this good traditional arts for the young generation.

So i hope that no want will said that i am in competiting with any others group. i am still very happy to receive any comments for you all so long as something to do with the list.

That's all! :)

Forwarding this for Keith Soohoo; don't know why it didn't come through in the first place.. looking into it...Greets, Rob

From: Keith Soohoo
Subject: new list
HI Rob- what do you think if we just had the "list" subscribe to their new list? we can still share information and I don't think that each of us have to subscribe to 2 lists. Not to attack the new guys on the list (in fact I applaud your effort). But then again I'm with you and I don't quite understand why another list had to be created.

keith

Hi all,

especially those who run websites--I've just made a small page with indications on how to subscribe to the list, so if you have links to the old address (on Chris' page) about the list, then please change them to:

http://elektron.et.tudelft.nl/~wingchun/Lionlist.html

and if you didn't have a link to the listpage, grab the opportunity and make one now..;-)

Greets,
Rob

Hello everyone,

I am a new member of the list and I am very excited! Does anyone know of written or videotape directions that explain how to make the lion for the lion dance? Are there written or videotape directions for the dance moves?

Thanks in advance for your responses,

Janine A. Lee
Creative Arts Director
Community Preparatory School
126 Somerset Street
Providence, RI 02907
EMAIL ride2995@ride.ri.net
VOICE 521-9696 ext. 318
FAX 521-9715

Hi RT,

On Wed, 21 Oct 1998, RT wrote:
> Rob,
> How about a way to unsubscribe. I've been trying to get off this "lion
> dance" mailing list for a month now.
> R.T.

Well, on the same page, it is shown how to do it:

To subscribe to the lion dance mailing list, do the following:
Send a message from the address that you wish to subscribe to:

majordomo@freud.et.tudelft.nl

with "subscribe liondance" as the body of the message. You can leave the title blank, it will be ignored. To unsubscribe, just send a message "unsubscribe liondance" to the same address.

If you have problems with this, contact me directly, and I'll cross your name off the list; normally everyone should be able to do it themselves...

Greets,
Rob

Yeah, I already deleted his name from the list.

It might be a good idea to include info on how to unsubscribe from the list at the end of each email sent through majordomo.

If any of you have trouble (un)subscribing, please mail either Rob or me and it will be done ASAP (within minutes/hours depending on the time, but certainly NOT a month :-)

Regards,

Serhat Sakarya

Hi francis!

Self -intro as Lindt Greeting from Cheng Jing Hui Dragon & Lion Dance Troupe.

I got a friend in Wei Jing. His e-mail is "cybersystech@pacific.net.sg"

Lindt

Hello, I am a student who is thinking about organizing Lion Dance team on campus. Now we have two lion heads and one drum. Actually, I am looking for a place where to buy cheap Chinese drums. We have $500. If you have information about it, please e-mail me and send information!! Help us!!!!!

Wulin chang
shohei90@hotmail.com

Dear fellow lion dancers,

What are you suppose to do when store owner leaves coconut, water-mellon, cabbage, tangerine, or orange out for the lion to eat. How do you approach these fruits? How do you eat it? What is taken and what is spitting back out? Is the skin of these fruits to be pill in one whole piece and not into many small pieces?

Yours,

Viet Thuan

Hi@

Nice to know u ! I am a 15 year old girl who wish to keep contact with lion dancers. Hope to hear from u soon!

Lindt
Singapore

Hi:

We have three lion drums........two of which are unusable due to tears in the heads. I have heard of a place in San Fran called Clarion(????). Does anybody know the adress of this place?

Also, as far as instructional video goes Could someone list what they think are the main reference video's available in the market today. I have seen Tat Wongs videos. I also have a pretty good one from Singapore that has excellent drum breakdowns. Interestingly enough, following a recrent thread, it also has a very lengthy section detailing the making of a head from scratch. It really helped when we were repairing our own heads.

Any other good ones out there............any one want to trade??????

Neil Mcritchie
Ching Lung Lion dance troupe
Canada