My friend/instructor, Ernest Rothrock, teaches the Lion Dance as part of his schools Northern Eagle Claw instruction. He studied this under Slum Leung in NYC.

The Lion Dance takes at least 3 people, 1 drummer and two for the Lion (1 for the head, one for the body). Somewhere I have a video he sent me of their effort. The head portion seems a very vigorous workoug, but he told me the most difficult part of the study was to learn the drumming to get it right.

Off hand I think the two people performing the lion change places but it's been a while snice I watched it.

I believe it is retained more for tradition in the Chinese community than for its pure martial application. The Chinese schools were more than just fighting emporiums. They were and are community members, and the public performance of the Lion Dance, is maintaining history of tradition in the art.

Yea drumming is a very hard thing, not as simple as just hitting it with a stick. Your music has to have a lively sound to it otherwise it'll sound kind of dead. And drumming is a workout all in itself, forearms get hella tired.

The switching part depends on the pair thats dancing. Some pairs dont switch at all. For example, the professional competition teams, they dont switch because the head guy is specifically good at using the head, while the tail is good at that so they stay in their places. While other people would switch midway during their acts since its tiring.

And yea its more prone to Chinese and Kungfu people but it still takes a good deal of MA to work it. I'm just saying that you can take those priciples of lion dancing and apply it karate, TKD, whatever you want and see how well they can move the head and balance and such.

Thanks for all of the info!
Very infomative.

yea i love lion dancing..so cultural and it gives you a work out too! I'm pretty fascinated in my own culture (probably why I post so much here) and kungfu is part of it which leads to lion dancing.

Lion dancing is almost just becoming an art form of its own. Alot of new aged teams and dancers aren't trained in kungfu rather they just learn what is needed to do the lion dance. So they learn how to do a horse stance but not like shaolin monks do. Very much acrobatic dominated now in the competition levels..but kungfu dominated when it comes to parading in the streets.

Definately seems more wushu/perfomance oriented.

well the lion dance has always been sort of a show for the public. Its for tradition and also for entertainment. So now alot of places arent even kungfu schools rather its a lion dance group who just train and learn to dance, not MA.

well wushu would help since its more of an encompassing art of most of kungfu. But different types of kungfu may give you different types of lion dances. Though of course most of it will be the same or similar, each type of kungfu is also different from one another and I guess if you're good enough you might be able to pick up on the subtle differences. Say a Tiger guy would look different from a Crane guy.

Check this clip for a lion dance demo -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBck8WIpOOM&search=lion%20dancing

nice find

some cool stuff I found, dont know if you can understand some of it though, its in chinese

drumming explained

buddha explained

i spent this years chinese new year in a small rural village (about 2500-3000people) in central china. and i saw lion dances, a lot of them. of course they were not professional, it is just local villagers who do this once a year. anyway, there were two larger groups of drummers (one from the west side of the village, one from the east). each group had about 8-12 people on the big drums, a few on small ones and others had cymbells. the lions were all hand-made, the head out of wood and iron and it was rather heavy. the bodiew were made out of clothing rags and animal fur. additionally to the 2 lion dancers they had one person teasing/fighting the lions, either with a type of ball or a pudao (horseknife). all age ranges participated, passing the lion costune on. there was an old gentleman, around 70 i'd guess who was amazying. jumping kics, low stances, everthing. and oddly enought everybody who participated (i'd say about 15-30people) seemed to know how to use the lion or the pudao (horseknife), without formal or proper martial arts training. it is sth that just gets passed on.

as for the other groups of martial artists doing lion dance... i think anybody can do it if they practice it. farming is different to martial arts, but it gives you strenght, co-ordination etc.