My Ignorance in Hok San Lion Dancing

After reading some comments about The Lion Horse, I’ve come to a realization that I completely neglected the existence of traditional Hok San lion dancing. This was very stupid of me because traditional Hok San lion dancing is probably the closest cousin to traditional Fut San lion dancing, as compared to northern lion dancing, Qilin dancing, etc.  I should have mentioned that I was speaking solely from a Fut San hybrid point of view. Here’s a list of the possible reasons for this ignorance:

1. I’ve only seen two pictures of traditional Hok San lion heads, EVER. At one point, I thought the most traditional Hok San lion heads were the older ones made by a prominent master in Malaysia. I don’t want to mention his name because I have mixed feelings about his contributions to the lion dancing community. Maybe I’ll write a blog about him one day. Anyway, I’ve never seen a video of traditional Hok San lion dancing either. Maybe the differences between traditional and contemporary Hok San lion dancing are so slight that I don’t notice them.

Picture taken from http://ykmusa.com/picsperf1.html

Picture taken from http://ykmusa.com/picsperf1.html

1. I’ve never been trained in Hok San lion dancing. The closest thing would be a hybrid style which incorporates aspects from both Hok San and Fut San lion dancing. I learned about the modified horse stance from this hybrid style.
2. A lot of teams use Hok San and Fut San lion heads interchangeably. I’ve seen some teams do Fut San lion dancing with Hok San heads, and vice versa. A lot of newer teams are creating hybrid styles that blur the line between Hok San and Fut San lion dancing.

Now that I’ve realized my ignorance in traditional Hok San lion dancing, I really want to learn more. It’s quite unfortunate that I can’t find much information about it on the internet. I think it’s time for me to ask some older and more experienced lion dancers about this topic.