Thursday, April 26, 2012

Some Nostalgic old posts

Here are some old posts I found from an older version of this blog.  I probably should have just deleted them as they are not current, but thought - what the heck - I haven't posted anything for a while and its a bit of nostalgia...

Learning the sword form

Originally posted SATURDAY, JANUARY 28, 2006

This is the wrap up photo from the tai chi weekend at queenscliffe, melbourne, Australia.



Whilst others worked on their regular forms, Barrie and I worked on the new sword form. I learned it from scratch and got about 4/5ths the way through it.

Finally I can do the same "professor's sword form" with the guys at morning tai chi practice

Advice on creating a tai chi video

Originally posted WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2003

A film (non-fiction or fiction) is a story with beginning, middle and end.   If your objective is to make a one-minute Tai Chi demonstration video then it may work to choose something to demonstrate that takes less than a minute.

Then you could spend seconds of footage before and after the "body" of the film showing fluid and unexplained movement and form as visual introduction, you could have titles over the beginning fluid footage and credits over the end fluid footage and/or a relevant Tai Chi quote or voice over dialogue speaking a quote.

In the middle of that you could have your 40-50 seconds of step-by-step demonstration.

Do you want to script it?
A minute of film generally equals a page of script.

About the main tai chi styles

Originally posted FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2004

I recently wrote an email of complaint to someone who had written an article on tai chi and did not list CMC as a major form of Tai Chi. (It was said that: There are 5 internationally recognized styles of Tai Chi Chen, Yang, Woo, Wu, Sun). He replied saying that although he respected the CMC style, he needs to respect the official Chinese party line on the history of Tai Chi, which apparently says that either CMC doesn't exist or that CMC is just Yang.

Hmmm.  When I see Yang style tai chi people and Chinese Beijing 24 style people demonstrate their form, they do not seem to be following the deep principles of our CMC style and seem to me to be coming from another culture - another planet! They don't clearly separate the weight, don't have beautiful ladies hands and seem to move the arms independently of the body/waist. I guess they are upright, though sometimes I don't think they are always relaxed, though maybe usually they are.

So its ironic that CMC is excluded from the main tai chi classification system by this guy - yet its the style that most closely follows tai chi principles!