National Multicultural Festival<\/a> from 6 to 8 February.<\/p>\nFor the first time, the troupe will perform the high-pole lion dance five metres in the air.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some daring movements,\u201d Wilson said. \u201dThere\u2019s one called the Running Man, where you balance yourself on your stomach [atop the pole in a lion costume], so your arms and legs are completely off, and then you spin around.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s never been performed in Canberra.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson\u2019s had new blue-and-green lions custom-made in Vietnam for the event, which will also feature a new snow dragon, Yuki, who is transparent in the day but multi-coloured at night.<\/p>\n
Dragon and lion dancing is part of many South-East Asian cultures, including Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia.<\/p>\n
For Wilson, it provided a way to connect with his culture after his parents moved to Australia in 1975.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack then, there weren\u2019t a lot of Asians in Canberra. I remember looking in the phone book \u2026 and there were about seven names that sounded Chinese,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also a way for him to show other people his culture. Wilson said some traditionalists may not like his thinking, but he hopes that one day the word \u201cChinese\u201d is dropped from describing the performance, and it\u2019s just another part of Australian life.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look at other things, like pizza and pasta, that\u2019s Italian, but every Aussie will eat it and cook it right, and it\u2019s embraced here \u2026 karate\u2019s not taught by just Japanese in Australia [as another example],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese things can be accepted into the Australian culture, so Australian people are a lot richer for it \u2026 and from that, there\u2019ll be kids that maybe come from overseas or maybe feel like they\u2019re from a minority group, suddenly they\u2019re gonna be proud of their culture, because it\u2019s actually just now Australian culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that would be a success.\u201d<\/p>\n
And for those who see the dragon and lion dancers performing and feel inspired to learn as well, Wilson says, don\u2019t let anything hold you back.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter what culture you\u2019re from, it doesn\u2019t matter what religion, what race. It doesn\u2019t matter what your sexual orientation is. Those things don\u2019t really matter [to do this] \u2026 one of my sons is autistic and he performs,\u201d Wilson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe aim is not just to perform, the aim is to teach, it\u2019s to start up new clubs, start up new teams, so that other people can learn it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is what Bruce Lee wanted for martial arts back in the \u201960s \u2026 [for people] to learn it, take what they want and make it fit for purpose and make it their own and make it grow.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re interested in learning kung fu (from age eight and up), or dragon and lion dancing (from age four and up), contact Moonbear Kung Fu either online<\/a> or email wilson@moonbearkungfu.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canberra Dragon Dance\u2019s Wilson Lo has plenty of surprises in store for this year\u2019s National Multicultural Festival. Photo:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":["post-442743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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