writing this since i skipped practice today LOL... want to remember my actual roots and what makes me excited about 舞狮 instead of just going through the paces or blindly teaching folks our new routine ^_^
there's lots and lots of resources on the basics of lion dance, so i don't need to write my own, but i'll give a quick intro for those of y'all who have never heard of it before! this is just the stuff i've heard from my team (which is a CA college team, so grain of salt, but yk, what can i do), i'll rehaul this whole thing with sources once i graduate and join the troupe i want LOL. i'll mostly be writing about head player information/ perspective since that's my role, but i'll try to throw in some tail tips too if i can (i'm.. ok at tail LUL)
lion dance is an art form/ sport that originated in china but is practiced all over east asia and around the world! lion dance started as a tradition to ward off evil spirits and clear negative qi from areas, so it's very common that routines today are performed for businesses or people who are looking to refresh and get some good luck. traditionally, lion dance was taught alongside martial arts at gongfu schools in order to help improve fighter's coordination with each other and practice core gongfu principles; this is where the emphasis on stances and power comes from!
there are a ton of different styles of lion dance, some from certain regions, some from specific gongfu schools, and there are also similar dances you might see performed with different creatures, like the qilin dance, tiger dance, etc. it's important to note that the lions AREN'T DRAGONS! yes, we know they don't really look like lions (i've never understood that argument, i think they look like lions LOL), but lions weren't native to the areas where lion dance started out, so they're abstractions of lions, plus, some of their features come from other symbolic reasoning (which i might talk about later). dragon dance is performed with a lot of people, USDLDF has a minimum of 7 dragon body players, whereas lion dance only has two, the head and the tail!
choosing whether you want to be a head or a tail is important, since tails will focus more on stunts and subtle moves vs. heads coordinating lots of complex movements with the head itself. you can choose to study both as well, if you like! your main area of expertise can also be the band, which plays during every performance and gives the lions life (the drum being the heartbeat of the lion). most professional teams and troupes will have new members start on band before they're allowed to be in lion, but with college teams (at least the ones i know) this generally isn't the case lol. i'll talk a bit about band but since this is text i can't really do that much LOOOL. other note: i only mention the shoulder thing for horse stance, but for all these stances, your upper body generally follows that same guideline since the stances are your footwork and oftentimes don't involve the head
probably the single most important thing in lion dance are stances. all moves are combinations of a set of stances and the transitions between them! each style has different requirements for stances and what they look like, for example: a sarping hoksan horse stance for a jong routine is more flexible and relaxed than a traditional futsan horse stance due to the fact that you'll be focusing a lot of energy on the jongs and also the fact that jongs are a set distance apart etc.
there are more stances than these, but these are the basic ones that will get you started out! horse, cat, crane, bow, and drop (sorry in advance for our wording differences, i'm so about to out myself for which team i dance for LOOOL). you can look up the proper form for these online, so i'll just give some tips that i give to newbies often here. in general, in-routine, your stances are gonna be a lot worse, which is totally fine; i think the best thing to care about at the start is getting the stances really solid out of lion and then working your way up to whatever level you want in lion. it's funny cause looking at my performances my stance game is actually kinda weaksauce rn so i gotta work on that LUL even after 3 yrs there's always room for improvement! other note: when i say "right" or "left" that's referring to the bent or leading side for the move: ie. a right crane stance means your right foot is up, right drop stance means your right leg is bent etc.
horse:
this stance is the most important to get right, and please try your best to get it right from the beginning! if you start to build poor horse stance habits, there's gonna be really annoying wall you'll have to climb later in your career that you won't want to be dealing with. aim for 90* but in practice, we often are more relaxed than that- it helps to start a routine in the lowest horse stance you have and have check-in points on moves where you make sure you haven't gotten too relaxed lol. your knees shouldn't be over your toes! open up your shoulders and stick your chest and butt out. if you're the head, your back is forming the lion's neck, so lean forward slightly from 90* in order to make a natural slope (some traditional styles do have 90* horse stances though). your feet should be close to pointing forward, and you shouldn't be holding any tension in your body. for all stances, you want to start learning your natural center of gravity (belly button) and promote balance through your form, not just from tensing your muscles. my evil moment this year has been testing people's horse stances LOL if a small push to your shoulder is making you fall backward, you're probably on your toes (your weight should be even on your feet, maybe slightly more on your heels)! if you shrug off the push by rolling your shoulder back, you're not open up enough :-} happy horse stancing ^_^
cat:
really versatile stance! sit heavily onto your back leg, this is pretty much a one legged horse stance if you think about it hard enough. the captain my first year used to tease us by kicking at our front foot; you shouldn't be holding a lot of weight on it, it should be easy to pick up and place down somewhere else. point your front toe ! ! oftentimes, people really half-ass a cat stance, if you want to be the coolest lion around, try to get it nice and low, it looks much better. sometimes folks will have their feet too close together, don't be afraid to open it up (ie. put your front foot out more), it'll help with stability. you want your hips over your bent leg and your feet at roughly 90* from each other, and it should be pretty steady!
crane:
arguably the easiest stance and my favorite to add to routines (cause it's easy. and it looks good!) ^_^ the biggest thing is transitioning into crane, make sure your core is engaged and be really careful about where your hips are, they should be directly over your foot that's on the ground. make sure to point your toes! your leg should be making a 90* angle, try not to bring your thigh up more sharply than that. you can angle the 90* away from your body (your knee goes outward) if you'd like a cuter crane, or if you're in a headstack. i try not to transition directly to a crane without some kind of sweep or other flair, it looks silly if you just go into it hehe
bow:
actually also not too bad. similar to horse stance, you don't want your knee to be more forward than your foot, ideally your bent leg makes a 90* angle (there's a theme here lol). your back leg should be STRAIGHT! most people will have their feet at 90* or some other angle, but it's not super vital.
drop:
one of the more difficult ones depending on your mobility level. don't sweat it too much if your ankles aren't flexible enough to drop fully down, just do what you can! i tend to drop with my bent leg's foot's heel up off the ground (since our main routine has a very quick into drop -> back into horse stance move), but technically both your feet should be flat. if you can do the squat where you squat with your feet both flat, you're gonna be able to do a great drop stance LOL. it's a good little warmup/ practice to move from left drop to right drop by transitioning to left -> horse stance -> drop (it helps if you ever need to do a horse -> drop -> horse set).
miscellaneous:
some other stances- half horse, cross horse (i don't know the name for this one but it's where you step over with your foot and your back leg is bent lol we call it . um. unicorn LUL), and then there's a whole host of mixed/ more casual versions of the stances you might use for transition or for a specific image! those 5 main ones are the most fundamental for our routines though, so we make sure people can do those.
one of the most important things you can do when starting out is get used to the lion head. it's a very common thread that people are scared of damaging the head or don't realize how to interact with it and this will make it so you can't perform the moves properly! for starters, your head should always be on the pad in the back of the lion head with the majority of the weight of the head resting on you. you should be able to stick both your arms out of the side of the lion and hold it up with just your head (although we never do this LOL)! your arms are only for directing the head or popping it up. the next thing is that