Canberra Dragon Dance’s Wilson Lo has plenty of surprises in store for this year’s National Multicultural Festival. Photo: Claire Fenwicke.
On a couple of acres in Sutton, Dr Wilson Lo pulls up the red roller doors on a large shed.
Inside, it is bursting with dancing dragons, lion costumes and all the props associated with delivering a volunteer dance troupe’s colourful and engaging performances.
Wilson started his own martial arts academy, Moonbear Kung Fu, in 2004, but the performance group didn’t fully emerge until more than 10 years later.
“As part of an extension for some Chinese martial arts, you also have lion and dragon dance [but] they just come out around Lunar New Year,” he said.
“In 2016, we brought a tiny little dragon [called Bruce] out to the multicultural festival, where we were performing anyway … and we just walked around the crowd with it.
“Then suddenly it was all over the internet.”
The stars further aligned when one of Wilson’s friends came to study at ANU. He also happened to be the dragon head of the Chinese troupe that won the national competition in China.
He trained Wilson’s students with the aim of delivering four performances in 2017.
“The first year, we ended up performing 32 times!”
It evolved from there, with a team coming down from Sydney to teach Wilson’s students lion dances, and a University of Canberra student joining up who also happened to have been the lion head of the university team that won a national competition. In 2018, Wilson also met the drummer who led the winning Chinese university team.
“We’ve been really, really fortunate to have great people, very experienced in the art, and then it just sort of blossomed,” Wilson said.
Now Canberra Dragon Dance performs between 60 and 70 times a year.
One of those events will, again, be the National Multicultural Festival from 6 to 8 February.
For the first time, the troupe will perform the high-pole lion dance five metres in the air.
“There are some daring movements,” Wilson said. ”There’s 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.
“It’s never been performed in Canberra.”
Wilson’s 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.
Dragon and lion dancing is part of many South-East Asian cultures, including Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia.
For Wilson, it provided a way to connect with his culture after his parents moved to Australia in 1975.
“Back then, there weren’t a lot of Asians in Canberra. I remember looking in the phone book … and there were about seven names that sounded Chinese,” he said.
It’s 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 “Chinese” is dropped from describing the performance, and it’s just another part of Australian life.
“When you look at other things, like pizza and pasta, that’s Italian, but every Aussie will eat it and cook it right, and it’s embraced here … karate’s not taught by just Japanese in Australia [as another example],” he said.
“These things can be accepted into the Australian culture, so Australian people are a lot richer for it … and from that, there’ll be kids that maybe come from overseas or maybe feel like they’re from a minority group, suddenly they’re gonna be proud of their culture, because it’s actually just now Australian culture.
“So that would be a success.”
And for those who see the dragon and lion dancers performing and feel inspired to learn as well, Wilson says, don’t let anything hold you back.
“It doesn’t matter what culture you’re from, it doesn’t matter what religion, what race. It doesn’t matter what your sexual orientation is. Those things don’t really matter [to do this] … one of my sons is autistic and he performs,” Wilson said.
“The aim is not just to perform, the aim is to teach, it’s to start up new clubs, start up new teams, so that other people can learn it.
“That is what Bruce Lee wanted for martial arts back in the ’60s … [for people] to learn it, take what they want and make it fit for purpose and make it their own and make it grow.”
If you’re 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 or email wilson@moonbearkungfu.com.
