Scott Phillips’ Important Project

Scott Phillips (from the blog Weakness with a Twist) and I have been exchanging ideas on the relationship between Chinese martial arts, religion and performance for the past year or so. Scott is presently in Taiwan researching the following important questions:

1.  To what extent are martial arts of any kind understood to have an impact on the unseen world?
2.  What elements of Daoist or other ritual practices (such as exorcism, purification or renewal) can be identified in martial arts practice?
3.  To what extent can devotional aspects of theater or dance be identified in martial arts?
4.  What can be said about the historical development of martial arts as a form of merit accumulation or dedication on behalf of ancestors, gods, community.
5.  What can we say about the overlap (in purpose or meaning) of dance and martial arts?
6.  Are there parallels between how efficacy is understood in dance/performance and how it is understood in martial arts?
7.  Are there parallels between martial arts practice and the ways in which trance is used in teaching or performing dance and ritual?
8.  How is trance categorized and identified within Daoist and popular ritual traditions?  What can this tell us about the development of martial arts?

Scott is concentrating on the historical and fieldwork aspects of this research. My contribution, thanks to a substantial research/creation grant from the Canadian funding body for academic work, is to develop both a curriculum and performances based on the practice of traditional wushu and qigong. In doing so, I hope to be concentrating on points 5 and 6:

5.  What can we say about the overlap (in purpose or meaning) of dance and martial arts?
6.  Are there parallels between how efficacy is understood in dance/performance and how it is understood in martial arts?

This spring I’ve spent a month in China with Chen Zhonghua and a week in Colorado with Ken Cohen putting the finishing touches on my proposed curriculum. I’ll be posting more on these trips soon. In the meantime, keep track of Scott’s progress in Taiwan here: http://northstarmartialarts.com/blog1/

~ by Daniel Mroz on June 17, 2009.