bad first demo

[shaolin_allan]

ok so I did my first kung fu demo for the chinese new year last weekend. I was actually really sick and got stuck half way through the form in front of a bunch of people and felt very embarrassed. I was just wondering if something similar has happened to anyone else or if you have any good/funny stories to share about your first demo?

[Neeros]

Was doing the tai chi 24 form with a small group of people, it was being recorded, I caught my back foot on my front foot during the right-bow to left-false leg transition for the second brush knee step. I managed to keep my root though and smoothly transitioned into the next posture thankfully, so it wasn't a complete fudge-up. :p

[shaolin_allan]

nice cover up man. Hey neeros do you use any messengers or facebook?

[Daelomin]

We were travelling in Tianjin with my teacher. We spent one night there, first day training and second day we joined a big demonstration/feast thing in honor of Huo Yun Jias birthday with many of the Tianjin Baji masters. On the first day we met one of the masters that my teacher had trained with. I had the priviledge to learn a form from him (a version of Xiao Jia). This form was kind of a different version of a form i already new, but with alot of added movement and different flavour. At the end of the day my teacher ordered me to learn this form and perform it the next day at the festivities. So i spent that evening in the hotel hallway trying to remember the whole form.
Needles to say i fudged up at the demo infront of all the people. Around halfway in the form my memory got locked. I tried to improvise some of the moves and it ended up kinda strange :D . But the spectators liked my form anyway, lot's of Hao! shouting. So i guess it's not really about showing perfect memory of a form, but the movement quality. **** embarassing anyway, Chinese national TV was filming the thing :o

[JamesC]

When I was 18, I was nearly knocked out by a 12 year old in front of the entire gym...

Heh, in my defense, the kid was really good. :D

[SPJ]

ok so I did my first kung fu demo for the chinese new year last weekend. I was actually really sick and got stuck half way through the form in front of a bunch of people and felt very embarrassed. I was just wondering if something similar has happened to anyone else or if you have any good/funny stories to share about your first demo?

pace your self

set up pause points among forms.

if you feel tired or sick or forgot what is next

assume your pause posture

such as single whip in tai chi

since almost all the moves in tai chi may turn into single whip

and start from single whip

elbow push or liang yi ding in ba ji.

green dragon extending claws in ba gua

etc etc

if too sick to carry on

after pause posture

then assume end posture

pause posture may be used at will or or at any moment, you think that you are in trouble for continuing or need time to recall what to do next

:)

[Featherstone]

Demo's are always fun, we just had one this past weekend as well. It's even more fun when the people that say they will be there dont show up and you get pulled off injured reserve to do single and group forms that you havent done in a while due to injury! Ah the things we do for our Sifu's. I've come to learn from my first time dropping a staff, that a dive or a roll can be a great way to cover up the mistake. :)

[TenTigers]

"Fake it till you make it!"
I always tell my students this. As long as you don't stop, just keep going. The judges/audience doesn't know your form anyway, so they would never know.
One of my students has thus far, performed about a hundred different versions of the sword form! I have never seen her do it twice the same.
Now, my SPM teacher also does this, but for him, it is the style expressing itself through him, and once it is inside you, it becomes spontaneous.
(that is now the excuse we use every time we eff up...):D

[GeneChing]

YEAR OF THE DRAGON 2012: She Takes Her Fan and Throws it in the Lion's Den (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1023) discusses how I split my head open and bled all over the place while lion dancing...twice.

I remember doing a demo for an elementary school and getting stuck in BSL #4 (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12789). That for repeats a section so I was stuck in a loop. It was on the school theater stage and I kept realizing I was repeating myself facing our drummer, a talented teenager who I had just taught #4, with my back to the audience. The first time, I looked at him and whispered 'oops'. The second time, I looked at him again - he was trying not to laugh - it was a low pressure demo so I whispered 'I'll get out next time'. The third time I said 'Next time, definitely'. In the end, I just stopped and did a closing movement. Our drummer didn't let me live that down for years.

[TenTigers]

YEAR OF THE DRAGON 2012: She Takes Her Fan and Throws it in the Lion's Den (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1023) discusses how I split my head open and bled all over the place while lion dancing...twice.

I remember doing a demo for an elementary school and getting stuck in BSL #4 (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12789). That for repeats a section so I was stuck in a loop. It was on the school theater stage and I kept realizing I was repeating myself facing our drummer, a talented teenager who I had just taught #4, with my back to the audience. The first time, I looked at him and whispered 'oops'. The second time, I looked at him again - he was trying not to laugh - it was a low pressure demo so I whispered 'I'll get out next time'. The third time I said 'Next time, definitely'. In the end, I just stopped and did a closing movement. Our drummer didn't let me live that down for years.

I did the same thing in competition with the butterfly knives. I was at the section where you go from rt cat to left while doing a flower and cut. So I did it once, and blanked out the next move, so I did it again, still didn't come to me, so I do it agian, and finally it comes. Luckily, my back was to the judges, so they didn't see the look of horror and panic on my face.
You can't get away with that in some Chinese comps-they have the judges in each corner!
Whenever I play "Kung-Fu Drum," for my guys doing a demo, I look away from them. If they screw up, I end up missing the beat if I watch. Then I use peripheral vision to end the drum with the end of whatever they are faking their way through!

[wenshu]

Outside of the requisite embarrassment of doing a public form performance in and of itself (crappy music, realizing you are a thirty year old who does "kung fu"); I was supposed to do Xiao Luohan which I had just learned so I was already resigned to being extra terrible in the first place and we had just gotten new uniforms. Unifroms with nothing but cheap elastic to secure the waistband. . .

During a foot stomp right at the beginning my foot caught the inside of my other pant leg and pulled my ill fitting pants down just enough so that my ass was hanging out but not enough for me to notice that anything was amiss for the rest of the form. It just so happens that a good portion of Xiao Luohan is performed facing the opposite direction.

Of course everybody offered the helpful admonishment to pull my pants up AFTER I got down off the stage. . .

[Drake]

I practice on pretty rough terrain back in the US. Mountains, REAL parks, etc. Many a rock/hole/wild animal has disrupted my execution. I'm cool with that, though.

[JamesC]

I practice on pretty rough terrain back in the US. Mountains, REAL parks, etc. Many a rock/hole/wild animal has disrupted my execution. I'm cool with that, though.

Where are you from Drake? If you don't mind me asking.

[Brule]

I practice on pretty rough terrain back in the US. Mountains, REAL parks, etc. Many a rock/hole/wild animal has disrupted my execution. I'm cool with that, though.

You forgot broken glass and syringes everywhere......

[Drake]

You forgot broken glass and syringes everywhere......

You know, I grew up in a place like that. Apparently it hasn't changed much over the years...

I have two scars on my hand, and one on my foot from broken glass. I still shudder when I think about the foot one. Slipped down a bit of a trail, and cut right along my foot. Sounded like paper tearing. *shudder*

[Lucas]

syringes filled with aids and the black plague

[Drake]

syringes filled with aids and the black plague

There were a ton of syringes under an overpass we had. Guess the junkies went down there to shoot up or something. How I never got a disease messing with them as a kid is beyond me.

[WingChunABQ]

I was once in a play that had an extended sword-fighting sequence. It was in a black box theatre, so the first row of seats were on the floor where we were acting.

The swordfight went off without a hitch, or so I thought. Turns out that when I swung the sword backwards for a strike, I grazed the eyelashes of a man in the front row with the tip of my sword.

Luckily he was a friend of mine so he was forgiving. Still, if I'd straightened my arm half an inch more, I'd have slashed him right across the eye.

[Lucas]

well those were the good old days when syringes were only filled with drugs :eek:

[ShaolinDan]

I think I've gotten through one (out of about 10 or so) demo without screwing up.

The best was when I chopped my arm open doing a broadsword form...demo was at an elementary school. :p

Actually it wasn't so bad, it happened near the end of the demo, and though the blood was down to my wrist by the end of the demo, it was all on the back of my arm...most of my teammates didn't even notice.
The main thing when you screw up is to keep going, if it's not a kung fu audience, they won't notice most mistakes.

[brothernumber9]

Years ago, maybe 1994 or so, my sihings put together this big surprise party for our Sifu Tai Yim. They invited other Sifu friends of his from out of town to come celebrate, Sify Chan Tai San, Sifu Hoy Lee, Sifu Derek Mimms, Sifu Mike Barry, Sifu Lily Lau, Sifu Jimmy Wong, and a few others, All in all there were probably a good few hundred people there. I was part of the lion dance portion and was a big headed buddha along with another classmate. The routine was filled with lifts and rolling tricks for the lion and acrobatics for us two big head buddhas.

For one trick, as the lion did a sideways roll, my co-buddha and I were to run and do a simultaneous forward flip over the lion as it rolled. We had practiced it a few times with success. We had these clipped off pieces of coat hangers glued to the inside of the maske wrapped in towlettes and tape to bite down on so the masks would not fall off during the tumbling. The demo went along up to the point of this flip trick. I readied myself and saw the lion signal it was about to roll. I looked at my classmate but he was not moving yet. I could tell that if I did not go at that point, that I wouldn't make it. I took off to run and flip over the lion. From the corner of the eyehole in the mask, I saw my classmate slip. I focused forward and managed to execute my flip over the lion, landed on my feet, knees bent , then as I was rising back up, I got clobbered from behind.

My classmate and I both veered to the same line, He was a better gymnast than I was and could get real good height. I made my flip, but because he slipped, and our vision was so limited, I ended up in front of him and he was right behind me. As I was rising from landing, he simultaneously landed his flip, on top of me. His butt, crashed into the back of my head. I tumbled forward, rolled over and regained my composure. My mouth piece had been knocked completely loose from inside the mask and out of my mouth from the collision. I ran over to my hing dai and yelled to him that my mouth piece was broken and I couldn't do any more flips. His eyes were wide within the mask and he yelled back "no sh!t! you got a big hole in the side of your face!" The crash ripped the mouth piece out and along with it, a full cheek of the mask. My classmate had to do the last big tumble run by himself. The demo was to conclude with both buddhas flanking the lion on each side after the last bow and in sync with the music do a standing back tuck "G-dak! Dong! Chut!" As the beat finished, we would land at the same time.
I figured I could at least do that one. The lion bowed the third time and the music played "Ga-dak! Dong! Chut!" I jumped up, felt the stall, tucked and rotated. As I was inverted the mask flew off. As I landed on the "Chat!", my right foot went straight through the mask that had fallen on the gound. It had now been turned into a big broken buddha egg shell. I grabbed my classmates buddha mask off his head, tucked the broken one into his mask and jogged off as if it was all okay, although I was thoroughly embarrassed, but now recollect on the whole thing with a good smile.