I just clicked on the video and... holy cow, there are two grown men inside a giant, heavy, furry, lion costume, jumping from pole to pole, many feet high, while being able to look only through little holes in the costume, surely with zero peripheral vision.
If someone had told me people would do this as a competitive sport, I would have said, "no way... why would anyone risk their limbs doing that?"
The article said they trained with the poles low to the ground. But even so, it looks very dangerous if one makes a tiny mistake. So do the gymnastic routines that are done in the Olympics. The reason I failed at gymnastics in school was I was unable to commit to the moves (if you didn't commit, you would hurt yourself).
Repeat something often enough, and one wil be able to do it with perfection without any mistake.
A concert pianist is also able to perform for hours without mistake, and he would easily do so blindfolded, simply because he has done it a thousand times.
Let's be realistic though, even experts fail sometime, but what sets them apart is the recovery and continue to train to have less mistakes, or even work in the mistakes so you don't notice. Many pianists make mistakes look like improv, and the audience won't notice the difference.
Since the topic is Lion Dancing, the very first video linked in the article has a part where the team does indeed fail, timestamped it for you here: https://youtu.be/fKEoe4ANGOU?t=291
Same goes for anything really. Figure skating is very hard and the ones competing in the Olympics are the best of the best. But still, push yourself hard enough and eventually you'll fuck up somewhere, even if it's just a tiny bit. Even the pros does that, and some would argue you're not pushing yourself hard enough if you're not on the brink of failure.
> Let's be realistic though, even experts fail sometime
Is that truly so?
I think many concert pianists will live their entire life without a single noticeable mistake at a live performance.
The unlikeliness of this event is what qualifies them for this vocation.
> Many pianists make mistakes look like improv, and the audience won't notice the difference.
I think this is very much wrong, — hitting either the wrong note, or accidentally striking in between two keys, will not sound as though it be improvation, but as a clear, false note and it certainly does not take an expert to notice this.
> Same goes for anything really. Figure skating is very hard and the ones competing in the Olympics are the best of the best. But still, push yourself hard enough and eventually you'll fuck up somewhere, even if it's just a tiny bit. Even the pros does that, and some would argue you're not pushing yourself hard enough if you're not on the brink of failure.
Figure skaters fail because they would not win if they only did what they knew they would never fail.
It is a matter of a risk–reward strategy needed to take first place, — this is not needed for concert pianists who do not compete against one another.
> I think many concert pianists will live their entire life without a single noticeable mistake at a live performance.
I don't know what concerts you've gone to, but to the ones I've gone to, I've definitely heard mistakes from the pianists sometimes and a quick search on Google reveals it's a lot more common that you think, especially since you think that these masters (because I do think they are masters, don't get me wrong) never ever make any mistakes in their entire life.
And no, playing the wrong note is not the only mistake you can make as a pianist. Most mistakes are simple mistakes that can happen to anyone. The reason you haven't noticed them so far, is that most professionals are very good at hiding their mistakes on the fly and not draw attention to it, so you think everything is well. But if you have a keen ear and you're familiar with the piece they are playing, you'll definitively notice some mistakes sometimes.
It's not the end of the world though, and I personally think it brings a more personal touch to the performance.
I took some dance training long ago, and pro dancers make mistakes all the time. They're very good at covering them with an "I meant that" attitude. I remember a nationally ranked pro couple once doing an exhibition dance where the woman had a wardrobe malfunction. Her expression and style never wavered, and she altered her movements slightly to fix it. It all happened so quickly and smoothly hardly anyone noticed.
I've never heard a pro singer sing a song the same way twice. That's why recording studios take many takes, picking the best of the lot. They'll even splice together cuts from multiple takes. Autotune revolutionized this, too.
Your mention of a backflip got me watching the video a second time, I couldn't picture how they could do that without a huge height difference between resting poles and then there's the horizontal distance to cross.
Those double stack moves are incredible. Two people pulling that kind of leap of faith in such a synchronised way while not being able to see anything takes a lot of practice and trust. I’ve never seen this before, and I’d pay to watch it in real life.
This reminds me of so many lesser known extreme sports and traditions that are endemic of different parts of the world. For instance the castells (human towers) from Catalonia: https://youtu.be/SQM4qbwyxCM
It would be 10x more interesting to me when the lion mimic cute animal behaviors instead of jumping on poles. Things like scratching ears, walking/running/jumping (legs movements), showing emotions (ears, eyes, tail), etc.
All of the lion dances I have seen in the past are all trying to impress viewers by doing dangerous stuff: climb, jumping on high poles, split fire,... I mean that is a lot of work, but not that impressive, as I can clearly see 2 grown ass man under the cape most of the time.
If anyone have a good lion dance video as per the description above, please send me, I really appreciate it.
To me dragon dancing has always been oriental idiosyncratic thing I thought I would never understand. But geeze, nobody could not appreciate the strength and skill on display in that video. They were tossing each other in the air while the pole they were balancing on was wobbling, all while making the damned thing blink for christsakes. The theatrical element added by the costume was icing on the top.
I saw some of these people last lunar new year in KLM, just performing on the street in front of a pretty large (spontaneous) crowd.
The acrobatics were really impressive. The performers looked like young teenagers who were having much more fun than I did at their age. Looked pretty dangerous though!
I know we're not supposed to complain about website behaviour. But why, in this community, that seems to be sensitive about privacy, do we allow posts from a site that simply forces users to accept their cookie policy that has no opt out to view their content.
And to be honest their content is a blender full of re-regurgitated chum drawn from wikipedia and other sources rather than original material.
If someone had told me people would do this as a competitive sport, I would have said, "no way... why would anyone risk their limbs doing that?"
Reality is indeed stranger than fiction.