Choy Li Fut in Montréal

A few weeks ago I spent a couple of days in Montréal. My friend and colleague Sylvain Schryburt and I attended Brigitte Heantjens’ production of Sarah Kane’s Blasted (Blasté en français) at Usine C and I got to catch up with my Choy Li Fut and Wu Taiji teacher Wong Sui Meing.

The theatrical production was a great disappointment. I am dismayed that Ms. Heantjens, who is the most interesting established director working in Canada right now, has been seduced by the fashionable buzz around Sarah Kane’s otherwise infantile and nihilistic writing. Given her excellent earlier work on Heiner Muller and Bernard-Marie Koltès, there is of course hope that she will get back on course.

My visit with Sui Meing was very refreshing. I arrived at the tail end of a morning gongfu class and joined in. It felt great to be leaping and swinging and yelling again and I realized just how fit regular intensive gongfu training makes one. After class we had a snack and then discussed various points about Chinese martial art training.

Sui Meing reported that he’s beginning to feel the spiral structure of the bones and the spiraling of his soft tissues during practice more and more consciously. He also showed me his ability to initiate rapid, light movement from the feet. Rather than dragging and grinding through the various twists of Choy Li Fut movement, he can initiate very powerful yet seemingly light body-twists, steps and leaps seemingly directly from his feet. The result he told me is that everything becomes more efficient and in fact less tiring.

Sui Meing then took me on a whirlwind (literally) tour of the applications of the Tong Ping Taigek Kuen (Tang Peng Taijiquan in Mandarin) which is a branch of Wu Jianquan Taijiquan. In 40 minutes he demonstrated at least 3 applications for every movement in the set. Thrilling. We also reviewed a section of the Zhi Neng Qigong and then he showed me the Northern Shaolin Cane form he’d learned from Master Chiu Kwok Cheung, the Toronto-based Bak Sing Choy Li Fut and Northern Shaolin master whom he trains with.

It was very good so see my old friend and teacher, if only for a few hours.

~ by Daniel Mroz on May 2, 2008.