Singapore Lion Dance Championship 2008Highly Recommended!
Singapore National Lion Dance Championship 2011
When:
Evenings, 5-10 Sep 2011
Where:
Civic Plaza, Ngee Ann City Shopping Centre
What:
Gravity-defying stunts by the best lion dance troupes in Singapore
Singapore Lion Dance National Championships 2011
- Top Tips for Visitors4 or 5 performances are rostered each evening.
The first performance usually begins around 7.30pm. Nearest MRT: Orchard Station. Most people will take up position, sitting on the steps of Ngee Ann City Civic Plaza. In my opinion, this is not a good position to view the performances, because of the back-lighting. You get to see silhouettes. A better way is to watch the proceedings facing Ngee Ann City itself.
Make time for the annual Singapore Lion Dance Championship. And you'll realise that there're more breath-taking stunts than Shaolin Temple.
These stunts are practised every evening all over Singapore. In the backyards of temples. In the gyms of community centres. In the parade squares of schools. And in many other places. In these unglamourous corners, hundreds of youths punish themselves severely in hope of a single reward: a place in the finals of the Singapore Lion Dance Championships. And who can blame them?
I first saw this love for chinese lion dance when I was teaching in a secondary school in Hougang.
A couple of my students were pretty uninterested in their studies. But they would never, ever miss a single lion dance practice, whether these were on weekdays or during prime-time weekends.
One day, they got onto the wrong side of the law. And their lion dance teacher suspended them from lion dance practices.
Boy! You should have seen the agony on their faces! These boys would have eaten cockroaches. They would have crawled through mud. And they would have barked like dogs. If that's what it takes to get back on the lion dance troupe!
Watch the video above. Listen carefully, and you'll notice a few young boys going 'ooh' and 'ah' in the background. These young boys will one day become leaping lions themselves. And they all started by watching these incredible athletes float from pole to pole. The future of Singapore Lion Dance is safe.
Chinese New Year Performances
- Better than the Singapore Lion Dance Championship?
Lantern Festival 2009
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