Southern Awakening Lion Dance – The heroes Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei

The lion head’s shapes of the Canton awakening lion are imitating the face models of Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei in the theatre performance, with the characteristics of bright colors, exaggerations and elite crafts to produce different types of awakening lions.  

This dance has retained the essence of the traditional awakening lion dance, among the lion dances, which has purposely highlighted the three lions dancing on the long sticks, respectively with yellow lion as Liu Bei, red lion as Guan Yu and black lion as Zhang Fei, meanwhile with the performance to express folk people’s respect for their loyalty, righteousness, benevolence and braveness. With these three sections of dances, the Heroes Gathering, Heroes Forwarding the Mountain, Being Sworn Brothers, they depicted the lions’ facial expressions, such as its joy, anger, sadness, happiness, movements, quietness, shock, doubts, soaring, searching, expectation, and its actions, such as turning, rolling, shaking, crouching, dodging, hovering, leaping, teasing, jumping, to express the strength, toughness, boldness, and martial spirits of southern awakening lions. Through personated and imagery performance, it further deepened the impression of the heroes into folk peoples’ heart, and had new intention for the ancient folk art of awakening lions.

In 2007, the awakening lion dances Lions Climbing to the Top of the Olympic Games-the Heroes Liu Zhang Guan get the "Star Award" square dance contest performance in the fourteenth session. In 2008, it also won the "Guangzhou City Propaganda and Cultural Excellence Awards".