Children's Class Weekly Re-Cap, Nov 28-30
Lil’ Leopards and Tiny Tigers
As we continue to prepare for the Chinese New Year banquet, both the Lil’ Leopards and the Tiny Tigers got to learn a bit about drumming. Drumming is an integral part of both dragon and lion dance. More than just providing a rhythm for the dance, the beat of the drum symbolizes the heartbeat of the lion and dragon. A heartbeat is needed for the lion or dragon to come alive and so when the drum stops, so does the lion or dragon.
With our own drum sticks and drum, we learned a 3-star drumming pattern as well as thunder drumming. Thunder drumming was, by far, the favourite.
Young Dragons Level 1&2
This week in our Young Dragons classes we continued with our Lion Dancing. As a special addition, each student got an opportunity to do some lion dancing in one of our lions. Being inside a lion adds a whole different dimension of challenges to the dance. Your vision is extremely limited, you can easily become disoriented, sound becomes muffled and it can become very hot and uncomfortable. So not only does lion take an extreme amount of physical skill, but with these added challenges, any successful lion dancer needs to be very strong mentally as well. All of these things is what makes lion dancing such a valuable tool in developing our skills as martial artists.
In fact, it is known throughout the Kung Fu community that a traditional school is judged by the quality of their lion dance.
Special Announcements for All Classes
The next Open Training takes place Saturday December 9 from 10-12noon.
As it gets colder, please remember that we do not open the doors until about 3-4 minutes prior to the start of class. If your child will be waiting outside, please remind them to dress appropriately for the weather.
