My friend Gavin Sandeman who trains Jiu-Jitsu with Nabil Khatib took me to this extravaganza fund-raiser organized by Nick Castiglia of OAMA. It was a great event and the first time I’ve seen that much professional MMA up close.

There were lots of great unexpected reversals and surprise knockouts, the most amazing being Sean Pierson’s inhumanly long arms as he reached in to knock out Fabio Holanda and Nick Denis’ recovery and knockout against Sean Qinn.

Apart from these dramatics, the thing I noticed right away was how professionalism was instantly visible; in the earlier fights between less experienced people, it was easy to see that the more aggressive person always won the day. With the more cool and technical professionals like John Cholish and Igor Gracie, the element of craft was added to simple aggression.

Many things happened so quickly it was hard to know why the judge had stopped the fight; the excellent Nabil Khatib was very frustrated by the referee’s call, which gave his bout to the equally impressive but I believe less experienced Mark Holst. I’m not alone in wishing I could see the last three seconds of that fight again.

Perhaps the thing that impressed me the most was the fact that Jiu-Jitsu superstar Renzo Gracie was there, cornering his athletes, wiping them up, holding their shoes and clothes and making sure they felt totally supported. Great, warm and down-to-earth behaviour from someone who could easily rest on his laurels. Mr. Gracie has a local school here in Ottawa, OAMA. It was a great moment when he said of himself and Igor Gracie ‘when we fight in Ottawa, we fight at home’.

D.

Here are some things I’ve been reading, watching, wearing and listening to…

Liu Ming’s mp3 lectures on North Asian Animism, Chinese medicine, the Zhouyi and the Daodejing. A huge amount of information is available here in mp3 format. Some background knowledge of Daoism, Tibetan Buddhism and the Chinese Yin Yang Wuxing cosmology is helpful. www.dayuancircle.com. These were the most enjoyable part of my fall ‘readings’.

Watching Your Back – Chinese Martial Arts and Traditional Medicine by Anthony L. Schmieg; a very intriguing read. It suffers a little from the ‘my lineage is the only real one’ syndrome, makes a few unorthodox claims about Daoism, but suggests all kinds of interesting ideas along the way.

Real Gold Does Not Fear the Fire – various notes about Chinese martial arts, drawn from Way Lun Choi and compiled by Ray Hayward. Ken Cohen suggested this volume to me and it is very rewarding indeed, great layout and pictures; the details are done with love and care.

Haramaki Love – these folks make Japanese style cloth tubes that keep your dantien warm. My friend Scott Phillips recommended them and I second his enthusiasm. Buy one for your mother as well… www.haramakilove.com

The Stick; a great tool for working out the kinks, especially in the lower body. I recommend the shorter one as it allows you to press harder and fits in a backpack: http://www.thestick.com/

The Trigger Point Wheel; can get to all the spots the Stick can’t and is even more portable. A great tool (that does not seem to have its own website).

Of course, people should simply study (and buy videos) from Chen Zhonghua, Allen Pittman, Ken Cohen and all the fine folks I list on my blog. For the curious, however here are some videos I looked at recently (and not so recently)

Martial Arts Video Reviews (of people I don’t know):

Tim Cartmell’s Groundproofing and Standing Grappling – strong teaching ability, great martial skill; the sparring between Cartmell and his students is great to see.

In this space there was a 2 line review that a few people found disproportionally upsetting. While the majority of the comments I received were appropriate and polite, there were unfortunately some that were immature and vicious. Having no wish to receive further  hate-mail I have removed the entire thing. This is a shame because the thoughtful and considerate messages I received and posted reflected very well on the product reviewed.

Mike Patterson’s Tian Gan – very clear; the material is quite simple, but seeing Patterson move is more important than the foundation exercises.

Roy Dean Jiu Jitsu Seminars DVD – Roy sent me this as part of my subscription to his online journal. The material is great and easy to learn from and he is clearly a good teacher.

Xuan Tong Zi – various VCDs available at Plum Publications, including the best version of the often boring Ba Duan Jin calisthenics I’ve seen. In Chinese.

Chen Ching Hua – beautiful film of Taiji Daoyin – good movers could learn from it, but there are quite a few knee busters. Great to see where the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre gets their chops.

Li Jiang Yu – Tao of Yi Quan. If you know what you are watching this is pretty great simply for his movement quality. Applications may not convince all viewers…

Anything by Scott Sonnon – he is a genius. His material is all about thoroughness and serious presentation. Extensive and useful.

Performing Arts; these are the two strongest videos on composing original material I’ve come across. Of course, there’s not nearly the volume of these that there is for martial arts…

Julia Varley – The Dead Brother – meticulous presentation of training for and composition of a short solo performance. (And I am giving a plug to someone I know here!)

William Forsythe – Improvisation Technologies – I hope this is still out there – it was a DVD-ROM on a Mac OS 9 platform. Really great analysis of the use of the body in space by one of the world’s top choreographers.

Possessed by the spirit of Nick Hornby and inspired by my friend and colleague Jean-Stéphane Roy’s excellent production of Kobo Abe’s Friends (les amis en français), here is a short ‘best of’ list since I moved to ‘our nation’s capital’:

Theatre in English:

Greek, by Steven Berkoff, directed by Kevin Orr

Mertz, based on the poetry of Curt Schwitters, created and performed by Peter Froehlich

Empire Builders, by Boris Vian, directed by Joël Beddows

Rough House, created and performed by Andy Massingham, directed by Brian Quirt

Seven Important Things, created and directed by Nadia Ross (I only saw rehearsals, but it were fascinating)

Honourable Mentions for Emerging Excellence!

Countries Shaped Like Stars, by Emily Pearlman, directed by Pat Gauthier

Arabian Night, by Roland Schimmelpfennig, directed by Natalie Joy Quesnel

Someone is Going to Come, by Jon Fosse, directed by Elif Isikozlu

French Theatre:

Le Testament du couturier, by Michel Oualette, directed by Joël Beddows

Cette fille-là (Shape of a girl), by Joan Macloud, directed by Joël Beddows

Nous étions assis sur le rivage du monde, by José Pliya, directed by Denis Marleau

Oxygène, by Ivan Viripaev, directed by Galin Stoev

Genèse 2, by Ivan Viripaev, directed by Galin Stoev

Dance:

Rocks, created by Tedd Robinson

The Reins, created by Tedd Robinson

Zero Degrees, created and performed by Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Sutra, created and performed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and the Shaolin Monks

Kagemi: Beyond the Metaphor of Mirrors, created by Ushio Amagatsu

Music:

The Afro-Cuban All-Stars (thanks to Sam Masich for the surprise tickets!)

I clearly need to see more music…

Thanks especially to the local theatre and dance artists.

While in Puerto Rico last week, I had a chance to catch up with my Taiji friend David Amador. David studied Southern Shaolin and Yang Taiji with James Wing Woo and I met him through Sam Masich, with whom he has been studying for a few years. 

David graciously picked me up at the airport and after I checked in to my room, we found a seaside park and worked on push hands and the excellent sticking sword game that Adriaan Blaauw shared with me this summer. (The sword game comes from Michael Babin, whom I’ve never met, which is silly as we live in the same town – thank you Michael!)

The next day, after the theatre conference I was attending, David and I walked around Old San Juan and its fort. We also visited the Pablo Casals Museum, which is a little house dedicated to the great cellist, who ran a music festival in San Juan for years. We also found a sea-side spot to exchange some ideas about Southern Shaolin, some qigong and more push-hands. I really wish David lived a little closer, as it is great fun to practice with him. I left him with a short version of the Huashan Qi Fa Gong to eventually use in his rehab qigong classes at the hospital where he teaches seniors. He showed me two great things from James Wing Woo – a ‘parts of the foot’ movement initiation sequence and a drill isolating and rotating the clavicle. 

David’s site (in Espagnol) is here: http://shanhuxue.com/montana-lago.html

Last Thursday Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and 21 Shaolin Monks performed Sutra, a choreographic work using the monks’ martial movement and acrobatic skills as its vocabulary. The performance was very close to perfect; it was short with nothing missing and nothing extra; it was entertaining but without stupidity or cliché; it was beautiful without sentiment and, best of all for me, it was happy. Not happy in cartoon-like or goody goody way, but the basic joy the performers all had in playing with each other was strong and consistent throughout. (Two days earlier I watched Thomas Ostermeyer’s reinterpretation of Hedda Gabler, which was perfectly executed, but deadly boring due to its celebration of narcissism and nihilism; tired as I am of emotionally immature art, I was well-primed for Sutra).

If you get a chance, go and see this.

Here’s a clip:

Thanks to Ottawa dance producer Kathy Levy for bringing this piece to us.

Sustained training is very slow. However, as we reach our 23rd, 3-hour training session, some shape has emerged.

There are three fundamental technique series. These take about 1.5 hours to perform and aim to provide fundamental attributes (strength, mobility, endurance and suppleness), to coordinate the limbs and to teach a basic vocabulary of movement.

Day 1 Technique:

• Silent Sitting or Jing Zuo (to make a clean break between training and the rest of the day)
• Ba Duan Jin (Some call this qigong, really it is simple martial calisthenics for mobility and to warm up the spine and the joints. This is Ken Cohen’s version)
• Wu Lun Ma (Ng Lun Ma in Cantonese; a Cailifo foundational set of steps, stances and kicks which I learned from Wong Sui Meing; very good for endurance strength, wind and coordination.)
• He Xing Ba Shou (the Eight Hands of the Crane from the Tibetan/Chinese art of Xi Zang Mizong Lama Pai which I learned from Ken Cohen; these resemble Cailifo movements, but are a little simpler and are practiced as a set; the Wu Lun Ma coordinates the lower body and this series the upper.)
• Dao Yin / Gong Li (a series of stretches, poses and movements for recovery, suppleness and strength)
• Da Ji Xing, Jue San Xing (stepping and limb on limb impact training for precision, coordination and appropriate control of force, Die Da lineament is applied and massaged in immediately following).

Day 2 Technique

• Silent Sitting
• Xi Sui Jing (Marrow Washing qigong, another simple warm-up series, emphasizing twisting and gentle opening and closing)
• Ta Ma (another fundamental stepping, stance and kicking series, emphasizing twisting)
• Lu Xing Ba Shou (The Eight Hands of the Deer, emphasizing twisting, also from Ken Cohen)
• Dao Yin / Gong Li
• Da Ji Xing, Jue San Xing 

Day 3 Technique

• Silent Sitting
• Xi Zang Mizong Lama Pai Gong Fa (the first two of three series of exercises that work on the coordination of the torso and the opening and closing of the lower back; learned from my friend David Daniel’s Lion’s Roar curriculum)
• Zuo Ma (another Cailifo fundamental stepping, stance and movement series, emphasizing rotation)
• Ba Fei Shi (The Eight Ways of Flying; movements inspired by the Yao or hawk, also from Ken Cohen)
• Dao Yin / Gong Li
• Da Ji Xing, Jue San Xing 

After a short break, we resume our work on three areas of artistic skill, about which I will write more later, but for a start, they are…

Day 1, Part 2: Partner Martial Movement

Day 2, Part 2: Voice and Song

Day 3, Part 2: Physical Composition

My teacher will be here in Ottawa at the end of November. Here’s the official information and contact people.

Master Joseph Chen Zhonghua, a disciple of grandmasters Hong Junsheng and Feng Zhiqiang, will be giving a Chen Taiji workshop in the Ottawa region. Master Chen is the international standard bearer of Hong Junsheng Chen Taiji Practical Method system.  For more info, visit www.chenzhonghua.org

Nov 28 and 29, 2009 (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 Foundation,

Yilu, Cannon Fist, and Push Hands Techniques

Cost:                        $80 for one day (Saturday or Sunday) or $150 for both days

Registration:  James Chan – jchantaiji@gmail.com, 613.270.0407            or

Rachelle Bergeron (Je peux répondre à vos questions en français.) –

      rachelle.bergeron@tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca, 613.816.1242

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

Sometimes, like last night, I see theatre that has not really been directed. I feel it is wise to be actually trained and skilled when one accepts the leadership role of the director; a little honesty or self-reflection is important when accepting work outside of one’s area of competence. Here is my running list of the basic ‘amateur’ errors. Why I’m so cross is that only 1 in 10 so called professionals avoids these kind of traps; just because you can crack your own knuckles doesn’t make you a chiropractor! 

Directing involves the creation of coherent rules for the management of time, space and change. It requires one examine alternation (time), differentiation (space) and causality (change). 

Here are the errors:

1. Turning off all the lights at the end of a scene while people bumble around in the dark covered by a recorded sound cue. This loses the audience’s attention and adds unnecessary length to the performance.

2. Allowing performers to enter and exit along the same trajectory. Appearance and disappearance is equal in weight to what gets said or done; trivializing them with a cuckoo-clock in/out movement makes the entire fragment pointless.

3. Actors need to have pauses of different lengths before they speak; one needs to create the illusion that the lines are spontaneous, not recited and a moment of suspension creates an impulse to speak. Sometimes lines need to be spoke over top of one another, likewise creating credible impulses. If there is no temporal and tonal variation in delivery, time both literally and subjectively slows downs as the work becomes more and more predictable.

4. There are often short fragments in a script that do not need to be performed; a character who comes on only once to do a little exposition is best cut and the semantic information transmitted by the text exchanged for visceral information given elsewhere.

5. Failing the identify the principal event of the performance and building towards and away from it creates a ‘dial-tone’ continuity in the performance that subdues rather than captivates the audience.

6. Failing in the details above leads to the performance being literally too long, requiring the insertion of an intermission; if your play needs an intermission for non-aesthetic reasons (i.e. people sitting down for too long, a need to sell drinks) it is very likely too long by at least 1/3. A poorly placed intermission makes the movement towards and away from the principal event even harder to manage. You can do pretty much anything written in 1.5 hours, unless of course you are attempting to stage the Mahabharata, the Iliad or a cycle of linked or history plays.

In any endeavor where you don’t actually know what you are doing, things take a long time. Directing is no exception. 

While there are lots of excellent artistic testimonies out there, there are almost no decent ‘how-to’ books on directing. Katie Mitchell’s is actually the only ‘in general’ directing book I’ve read that does not make matters worse.

While being able to operate a deep-fryer and flip a piece of meat from side to side might make one a professional short-order cook, it does not make one a chef!

Grr…

I was reading the blog of David Chapman, who is a practitioner of Dzogchen, a lesser known aspect of Tibetan Buddhism (http://approachingaro.org/). In one of his essays he linked to Paul Graham’s site. I had no idea who Paul Graham was, but I was fascinated by some of his writings and some of his links:

1. Graham posts the text of Richard Hamming’s apparently famous lecture. While I don’t always agree with the ‘we need more ambitious super-heroes’ tone, there is lots to consider in here: http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html

2. In his RAQ section, Graham says some very interesting things about teaching: http://www.paulgraham.com/raq.html

3. There are lots of essays here. I particularly like the one on procrastination, but they are all interesting, even if you are not a computer programmer: http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.htm

Thanks David!

It is a little pointless to collect quotes; they are often prescriptive ideas that we happen to agree with or that match our experience. So, that is exactly what these are; statements I agree with enough of the time to share them…

The only persistent problem for the artist is to express a subject which is always the same and which cannot be changed, by finding a new form of expression each time. Francis Bacon

If your exercises change, you won’t. Richard Fowler

The Chinese character for theatre includes the element ge (axe), the same weapon associated with the fangxiang exorcist [one of the oldest indigenous religious practices] – reinforcing the close relation between exorcist ritual, acting and martial skill. Jo Riley

The artist has a duty to be calm. He has no right to show his emotion, his involvement, to go pouring it all out to the audience. Any excitement over a subject must be sublimated in an Olympian calm of form. That is the only way in which an artist can tell of the things that excite him. Andrei Tarkovsky

The political system of western representative democracies is based on certain rules in which all equal citizens can participate. It is a vulgar appeal against these principles that through art, not through democratic rules, the whole system should or could be altered. Mika Hannula

The notion of theatre has been diminished in the secular world where theatre is equated with entertainment by poor actors who have to win the approval of rich patrons. This attitude blinds itself to the truth; that theatre is older than language, that it is the primal form of human expression, where the body is employed to make and share meaning. Margaret Chan

Power is the ability to not to have to learn. Karl Deutsch

Practice in the morning, late afternoon, and in the evening. Go to bed, get up, and do it all over again. That is the way to succeed. T.T. Liang quoted by Ray Hayward

The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision. Moses Maimonides

Daoist ritual, Taijiquan and the stage are one system. And you can quote me. Dr. Michael Saso.

Artists don’t wonder, “What is it good for?” They aren’t driven to “create art,” or to “help people,” or to “make money.” They are driven to lessen the burden of the unbearable disparity between their conscious and unconscious minds, and so to achieve peace. When they create art, their nonrational synthesis has the power to bring us peace. The words of the rational mind have no power to bring us peace through art. David Mamet

Your moves have to have emotional content without you becoming emotional. Steve Morris

In later years Grotowski remarked that the best training for an actor might be some form of martial arts. He pointed out that in this type of combat exercise the results are always tangible. If you don’t do the right move, you get kicked. Jim Slowiak

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. Yeats