Motley Is A Fool's Uniform

My basic design has the head mounted on a pole, connected by a fabric neck to hopes on poles that compose the body (also connected by fabric sleeves), to a long fabric tail (held up by poles). The wing itself is ribbed, and supported by poles at the knuckle and end. The dragon itself would be essentially a stick puppet carried above the carriers (who would preferably be in blackout, although a mob of medieval peasants might also be appropriate) and brought alive by the combined efforts of the carriers manipulating the poles in formation, in the same manner as the Chinese Dragon dance (except this one was going to be western and winged). Actually given my previous experience as a drill instructor, I can see this going terribly wrong ("your other left, stupid!").

Oh well, it's probably gone the way of the challenge lion – I was always disappointed at the Chinese New Years good luck ceremonies in Adelaide that there was only ever one lion (if that) "competing" for good fortune. It would have been fun to come along one of these mini-festivals with our own stranger lion (it would have to be female since the lion they use is most often male) and initiate a proper challenge (unbenownst to the organisers, of course). For a time we even had the acrobats willing to take the lion roles (and they didn't do to badly dancing the traditional moves with the mock up either); our problem was finding the drummers capable of supporting our lion (the fact that we'd probably also have to supply drummers for the other lion [since it tended to use canned music] didn't help. This is because the secret of the lion dance is in the competition between the drummers – or at least that's what I've been led to believe.

Still, it would have been fun to initiate a proper challenge lion dance, and to see a dragon fly at the English Ale.