Malaysia’s first female lion dance coach juggles day job with raising new generation of cultural bearers

Like for many a young female professional in Malaysia, it has become a near daily routine for Ms Tan Yee Lee to get ready for her “second shift” after knocking off work.

But instead of heading to a spin or yoga class, she sets up wooden benches and ornamental lion heads for a practice session with trainees of her lion dance troupe in Rantau, Negeri Sembilan.

Master Tan, as the coach is known to her troupe at the Rantau Dragon & Lion Dance Association, was officially recognised as her country’s first female lion dance trainer in the Malaysian Book of Records on Feb 8, 2026.

The recognition was overdue. She received her licence in 2018, and has led her charges to hundreds of lion dance performances since.

“We need to pass down this culture we inherited,” said Ms Tan, who first started learning the ropes and moves as a 12-year-old, after getting exposed to the traditional dance by her father, a former lion dance practitioner.

Her day job is in business development for a petroleum retailer.

While the Singapore Wushu Dragon & Lion Dance Federation counts nine coaches among its ranks going back to 2013, women practising or coaching the Chinese cultural dance in Malay-majority Malaysia are few and far between.

Around a quarter of her 40-strong troupe is female, including one girl as young as five.

“Seeing young girls join (her troupe), and progress to take part in dance performances brings me joy that there are young people to carry the baton,” the 32-year-old told The Straits Times in Mandarin, shortly before her umpteenth performance this Chinese New Year.

“What the boys can do, we (girls) can do it just as well.”

One visibly distinguishing factor of Ms Tan’s lion dance troupe is its multi-racial make-up, with 80 per cent of the group being Indian – something she puts down to the demographics of the Rantau community as well as their willingness to learn and embrace traditional Chinese culture.

“There are no language barriers – everyone can take instructions in Malay, Mandarin or Cantonese,” she said, with herself being a product of the national education system with the medium of instruction as Bahasa Malaysia.

She accepts anyone who is willing to learn, be disciplined and willing to “eat hardship”, said Ms Tan. She also received national accreditation to judge lion dance competitions in 2022.

The resilience is necessary for the Chinese New Year period when her troupe is the busiest with engagements at commercial settings or private homes.

The Rantau troupe sometimes performs up to seven or eight times a day around their Negeri Sembilan home state, or neighbouring Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, with performance fees reaching tidy five-figure sums for large corporate performance requests.

Year round, most of her troupe’s clients hire a lion dance troupe to set an auspicious start to a company’s openings, a new year or even weddings and moving into a new home, she said.

She recalled Malaysian Airlines opening a new route at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in 2024 as one of her troupe’s more memorable performances.

Ms Tan said her team’s “teachability” has been a key pillar of their growth from just a handful of trainees to the current group that can independently perform at different venues.

“Huxiang,” she said, using the Chinese word for mutual, as in mutual support or mutual help, when asked what she emphasises for a team performance where the lion dancers take the spotlight, but other members are equally essential.

“Whether it’s the one controlling the lion’s head or back, or those on the percussions, everyone will get their stage to showcase their talents,” she says, before speeding off to oversee another of her team’s performances.