Practical Method Taijiquan Workshop in Brest, France, December 17 & 18, 2011

With Master Chen’s permission I’ll be giving a short introductory workshop in Brest, France, hosted by my good friend Erwan Cloarec. I hope to present Master Chen’s approach and give French and Breton practitioners a chance to discover the Practical Method. The French description is below:

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Le stage des 17 et 18 décembre avec Daniel Mroz se confirme. Il se tiendra au Centre Tsurugi, 3, rue kermaria, à Brest (Lambezellec) et il reste des places!  Je conseille vivement à tous les pratiquants expérimentés ou débutants qui le peuvent de participer à ce stage, ainsi qu’aux pratiquants d’arts martiaux intéressés par une première approche du Taijiquan. Si le Taijiquan Chen “Méthode pratique” constituera le corps de ce stage, les principes abordés (voir ci-dessous) dépassent les limitations stylistiques et enrichiront vos pratiques respectives. L’approche de la “méthode pratique” est, comme son nom l’indique, unique en ce qu’elle transmet avec une grande clarté les principes fondamentaux du Taijiquan. Ajoutons les grandes qualités pédagogiques de Daniel Mroz, ainsi que sa double pratique des arts martiaux et des arts performatifs (Il est metteur en scène des “Ateliers du Corps” et professeur de Théâtre à l’université de Ottawa).

Stage exceptionnel

17-18 décembre 2011

Brest Centre Tsurugi

Mouvement et Action : Une introduction à la Méthode Pratique du Taijiquan Chen de Hong Junsheng, telle que transmise par Chen Zhonghua.

Avec Daniel Mroz, Ph.D

Un des adages du Taijiquan qu’on entend le plus souvent affirme que « quand une chose bouge, tout bouge ». Ce stage invite les pratiquants de Taijiquan, expérimentés ou débutants, à considérer l’inverse de cette affirmation : Différencier, selon les propres mots de Chen Zhonghua le mouvement de l’action. Afin de présenter cette approche nouvelle et iconoclaste de l’entraînement au Taijiquan, nous nous intéresserons au Jibengong ; les bases de l’approche de la Méthode Pratique, le Shisan Shi, soit les treize premières postures de la forme solo Yilu du Taijiquan Chen, et une série d’exercices et de jeux avec partenaires propres à ce style.

Ce stage est ouvert à toute personne intéressée par le Taijiquan et par les approches sophistiquées de l’entraînement du corps. Vêtements confortables n’entravant pas les mouvements et chaussures d’entrainement à semelles plates. Nous vous suggérons d’emmener une bouteille d’eau, un carnet et un stylo.

Horaires :

samedi 17 decembre : 14h-18h

dimanche 18 decembre : 10h -13h et 14h30-17h30

Tarifs :

60 euros membres Stok-ha-Stok

80 euros non membres Stok-ha-Stok (comprenant l’adhésion)

Prévoir des chaussures légères et propres (pratique du tatamis!)

Inscriptions et renseignements

au 06.48.00.69.36

ou stok.ha.stok@gmail.com

Laura Astwood in the Ottawa Citizen

A little piece the Ottawa Citizen did on Laura and her stilt performances:

 

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Video+million+Stilter/5755610/story.html?tab=VID

 

D.

from the Dao De Jing Chapter 56

知 者 不 言, 言者 不知.

 

For Lisa

My dear friend Lisa Wolford Wylam died tragically on October 9th, 2011. This is from her memorial service:

 

For Lisa

I am here to praise my absent friend and to thank her.

Praise!

Lisa was deeply devoted to the art and artists whom she studied and supported. She had deep resolve and commitment and with these the courage to stand for her views fully and completely.

For someone so professionally successful she was delightfully and forcefully intolerant of careerist bullshit. At the same time, she was infinitely tolerant of her friends’ foibles and vanities.

She expressed both her devotion and her tolerance in her loyalty to her friends, which was ferocious. She extended to many of us here the honour of measuring her life and works using our modest contributions as a yardstick, placing us alongside the celebrated artists she had known. The Pole Stars about which her life revolved were both celestial and personal.

Thanks!

I’d like to thank Lisa for her friendship, for her kindness to me, for her encouragement of my work. She generously wrote the introduction to my book and thoroughly and thoughtfully reviewed the performances my colleagues and I created together. Her confidence remains a daily tonic for me.

I’d like to thank her for her meticulous writing and her exquisite English and for the happy hours I’ve spent with her in book form.

I’d like to thank her for our many, but far too few, extended, happy, over-specialized and totally-unintelligible-to-others conversations, the fruits of fifteen years of friendship.

One such conversation has been with me often these past weeks. Lisa and her good friend Kris Salata and I – Kris and I had just met – holed up her hotel room in Chicago. Lisa curled up comfortably on the bed and drank black tea while Kris and I got into a rambling and animated discussion over a bottle of red wine. The bottle turned into bottles and the three of us sent out for pizza. We talked until four in the morning. I will always remember Lisa’s quiet delight as she sat on the bed with her tea, her face radiant with the satisfaction of friendship.

I am so very sad she is gone, but it is a great honour and joy to see you all here for her. I hope that we are an assembly that would have delighted her just as she brought so much life to us.

Master Chen Zhonghua in Ottawa, February 2012

Chen Taiji Ottawa-Gatineau Workshop
“The quality of teaching is second to none!”

Master Joseph Chen Zhonghua, a disciple of grandmasters Hong Junsheng and Feng Zhiqiang, will be giving a Chen Taiji workshop in the national capital area. Master Chen is the International Standard Bearer for the Hong Chen Taiji Practical Method system (http://practicalmethod.org).

February 10, 2011 – private lessons
Times available: 3:00-5:30pm and 7:00- 9:00pm
Location: Gilles-Vaillant Tai Chi Center
109 rue Wright, Gatineau
Cost: $100 per hour

February 11 & 12, 2012 (Saturday and Sunday)
Time: 9 am to 4:30 pm (both days)
Location: University of Ottawa, Theatre Building
135, Séraphin-Marion, Room 303, Ottawa
Content: Chen Style Practical Method System
Yilu, Push Hands Techniques
Cost: $90 for one day (Saturday or Sunday) or $160 for both days

Registration: Rachelle Bergeron (Je peux répondre à vos questions en français.)
rachelle.bergeron@rogers.com 613.898.5146

Note : The workshop is open to taiji enthusiasts of all levels.

Atelier Chen Taiji à Ottawa-Gatineau
“La qualité de l’enseignement a aucun pair!”

Maître Joseph Chen Zhonghua, un disciple du grand-maître Hong Junsheng et Feng Zhiqiang, donnera un atelier de Chen Taiji dans la région de la capitale nationale. Maître Chen est le Porteur international de l’étendard du Système de méthode pratique de Chen Taiji de la famille Hong (http://practicalmethod.org).

Le 10 février 2012 – sessions privées
Heures disponible : 15h-17h30 et 19h-21h
Lieu: Centre Tai Chi Gilles-Vaillant
109, rue Wright, Gatineau
Coût: 100$ de l’heure

Le 11 et 12 février 2012 (samedi et dimanche)
Heure: 9h à 16h30 (les 2 jours)
Lieu: Université d’Ottawa, Édifice du théâtre
135, Séraphin-Marion, pièce 303, Ottawa
Contenue: Système de méthode pratique de Chen
Yilu, techniques de pousse-main
Coût: 90$ pour une journée (samedi ou dimanche) ou 160$ pour 2 jours

Enregistrement : Rachelle Bergeron
rachelle.bergeron@rogers.com 613.898.5146

Note : L’atelier est ouvert aux fervents de taiji de tous les niveaux.

Recent Site Updates

We’ve updated www.dancingword.org

• A page on Frères d’hiver, for which I created the choreography: http://www.dancingword.org/perf_freres.htm
• A video of a Taiji competition I participated in China: http://www.dancingword.org/perf_taijiquan.htm
• An older video that accompanied my PhD presentation back in 2004: http://www.dancingword.org/perf_taijiquan.htm

Lecture – Opera and Consciousness

Prof. Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe is the series editor of Consciousness, Literature and the Arts for Rodopi Press, the series in which my book The Dancing Word appears.

Department of Theatre, University of Ottawa Is pleased to present

Professor Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe, Lincoln School of Performing Arts, University of Lincoln, UK  with the lecture

Opera and Consciousness

Opera singers and spectators alike report extraordinary, desirable, very pleasant, experiences. For singers, they include unity of music, libretto, voice, and audience; for spectators, they include chills (also referred to as thrills or frisson). In the lecture I review the existing research carried out to explore and contextualize such experiences (Maslow’s peak experiences, Gabrielsson’s Strong Emotions in Music etc.), and I add further material from recent consciousness studies.

LOCATION: 135 Seraphin-Marion Street, Room 310 (University of Ottawa, Department of Theatre)

Date and time: September 19, 6p.m.

Open for all interested parties

The lecture will be in English

 

Qigong Course for Performing Artists, Fall 2011

An Introduction to Zhi Neng Qigong, 智能气功

with Daniel Mroz, Ph.D. 

The Ottawa Dance Directive and Les Ateliers du corps present a unique opportunity to learn a rare system of Chinese restorative movement never before taught in Ottawa.

What is Qigong?

Qigong is a recent term for a body of exercises drawn from the Chinese Daoist, Buddhist, martial arts and medical traditions. Qigong literally means “energy work” or “breath work” and seeks to nourish and restore the life-force of the person who practices it. 

Qigong exercises are composed of the san jiao or the Three Regulations: the regulation of body, of breath and of mind. Qigong uses movement, controlled breathing, vocalization and visualization and can refer from to everything from powerful isometrics, to gentle restorative movement, to silent sitting meditation.

Qigong practice cultivates an appropriate and effortless response to change. Performing artists will find that qigong has a positive impact on their overall health and coordination, on their ability to absorb the multiple demands of a new performance more quickly, on their ability to recover rapidly from physical and mental stress and on their creative or lateral thinking.

Qigong training typically begins with exercises to ‘cleanse’ the body’s qi, continues with exercises that cultivate or restore the qi and builds to more active exercises that circulate the life-force throughout the organism. Training often concludes with self-massage to consolidate the recovery process.

What is Zhi Neng Qigong?

Zhi Neng Qigong is a contemporary synthesis of earlier styles. The name means ‘Intelligence’ or ‘Wisdom’ qigong. It was officially founded in Northern China the 1980s by Pang He Ming. Pang studied with numerous senior qigong exponents to create his synthesis. Many of the exercises in Zhi Neng Qigong come from the tradition of the Liu family of Hebei Province and Liu Yan Ming, a master of the style moved to Montréal in the early 1990s, where he taught both my  teacher Wong Sui Meing and my friend and colleague Barry Thompson, whom he formally adopted as a disciple.

There are five series of exercises or ‘chapters’ in the foundation practice of Zhi Neng Qigong and two ‘chapters’ in the more advanced practice. In this short course we will be concentrating on two of the first five chapters, called Lift Qi Up, Pour Qi Down (Peng Qi Guan Ding) and Form & Spirit Training Method (Xing Shen Zhuang).

Introductory Classes – All Are Welcome!

Location: Ottawa Dance Directive, Arts Court, Ottawa

Time: 10:00am-11:30am

Dates: Sept 22, 23, Sept 29, Oct 6,7, Oct 13, 14

Fee: $100.00

Contact: Ottawa Dance Directive - Lana Morton – lmorton “at” videotron “dot” ca

Please wear loose, comfortable clothing; please bring layers; please wear comfortable thin-soled, flat-soled shoes (martial arts trainers, indoor soccer shoes, wrestling or boxing shoes are ideal) as we will be standing for extended periods on a hard-wood floor.

Please note that this is not a drop-in class. Each session will build on the previous one and attendance at all classes is essential for progress.

William Lau Performing in Ottawa

William Lau Jingju in Ottawa

Site Updates

Our website, www.dancingword.org has been updated.

The ‘upcoming’ page: http://www.dancingword.org/index.htm

The ‘performances’ page on ‘Shah Mat’:

http://www.dancingword.org/perf_shahmat.htm

The ‘collaborators’ page:

http://www.dancingword.org/collab.htm