Gao Yishan Reimagines Lion Dance Through Art | Auspicious Lion, Blossoming Lotus

Everyone carries a different lion in their heart. Foshan artist Gao Yishan believes the lion need not always be bold and fierce. In her eyes, it is a symbol of strength tempered by softness.

A Lion of Two Natures

"The roots of lion dance trace back to mythical beasts from the Silk Road," Gao says—a creature reshaped over a thousand years into the lion we know today. Here, she reimagines it in felted wool, soft to the touch, dressed in bold, vivid color, weaving lotus petals into the lion's mane. Her lion embodies a poetic ideal: fierce in spirit, gentle at heart.

A State of Mind, Told in Color

The colors of traditional lion dance follow an inherited grammar. Yet Gao sees room for new expression. “I look for a window between reverence and renewal, where tradition can breathe and be dressed anew.”

Guarding Each Other

For Gao, lion dance deserves to live on for reasons beyond its beauty. "The lion has always protected us," she says. "But that protection has never been one-sided—we owe it the same, protecting the river of culture that runs behind it." Tradition shouldn't sit still behind glass. It deserves to breathe, and grow, in ways that feel alive today. What she wants most isn't for people to simply see the lion dance, but to feel it—a philosophy she calls carrying the old into the new, letting ancient spirit quietly take root in daily life.

Weaving together Macau's city flower, the lotus, with Foshan's lion dance, Gao stitches two cities into a single creature. That cross-city dialogue is exactly what MGM's stage aims to create—bringing tradition into Macau's daily, and folding Macau into the lion itself.

MGM goes beyond showcasing lion dance culture, bringing together inheritors, artists, and the public to explore its next possibility.