Traditional versions to Wushu sets ?

[r.(shaolin)]

................................................
MasterKiller wrote:
All traditional styles can be directly traced to Moses.
................................................

:-)))) If I'm not mistaken all the animals can be directly traced to Noah. Moses was skilled in the stick and snake form.

[phoenix-eye]

Shouldn't "traditional" mean "emphasis on practical self defence" rather than "old" or "historic".

Maybe we've all started to get caught up in the traditional hype.

I though the "tradition" was one of civil defence - e.g the arts were there to defend yourself in the event of a civil attack, i.e the same ethos as the derivative okinawan karate styles, as opposed to a battlefiedl art like japanese jiujustu.

I think we've allowed ourselves to be sidetracked by the meaning of the word "traditional".

The tradition is coming out of street fights as the winner. Let's all try to get back to that "tradition".

Paul

[SifuAbel]

PE took the words right out of my head.

The form on the video looks like many types of traditional long fist. The moves were crisp and done well. There were a lot less acrobatics, than usually seen, on this video.

The main difference I see is that there seems to be no opponent in the movement. If there is a huge difference in traditional vs modern KF it's in the eyes and intent of the performer. The best wushu people(and the best Traditional people for that matter) have the eye. And thusly don't look like they are just going through the motions.

One other difference, in the long fist form at least, is that the continuity per subset seems to break up too much.

[GeneChing]

My old fencing coach used to always say "It's all in the eyes. The eyes are the mirrors of the soul." Of course, he was an old traditionalist and gave lessons without a mask, which is considering pretty dangerous nowadays.

By defination, tradition just means that it has been passed down from generation to generation. Given that, we can actually start to call modern wushu 'traditional' in the next few years. Now wouldn't that mess people up? But then again, it's easy to mess up martial artists that are illiterate. Of course, here in the bizarro world of CMA, traditional has taken on some kind of new meaning, probably closer to what PE and SA have just agreed upon. In a way, I do concur. I think we should try to draw a distinction between martial arts for combat (aka 'traditional' for this thread) and martial arts for performance. Modern wushu is clearly for performance. Frankly, a lot of traditional jibengong is pretty ugly, not the kind of stuff you'd really want to watch for pleasure, but the most necessary to be effective for combat.

[richard sloan]

I did some sabre in a NYC gym with a former olympic guy.

Only lasted about 3 weeks, because I enjoyed walking...

fencing is no joke.

[ninja]

That Level Five Chang Chuan video is taken from the wushucentral.com video collection. The girl is a young beijing wushu team member. There are no traditional shaolin temple mechanics in that form at all. It may seem to resemble shaolin because of what you see from shaolin performers but no old style shaolin person would ever keep a straight elbow out like that, unless it was for a performance. This is a good form to learn though if you are looking to aquire the essential wushu style movements and skills without diving into the competition form.

[Royal Dragon]

What if you performed it with good Shaolin mechanics?