![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tai chi... and the teaching.
Jul. 13th, 2010 10:05 pmShockingly tai chi only has one form. I've read enough fantasy novels with sword fighting to know that most arts martial have several set "dance routines". Tai chi does have variations, stylistic variations about whether smoothness or angles are of primary importance, and length of form--- there is a 100+ posture so called "long form" and a shorter form of about 35 postures and an extremely short form of about 20 postures.
Most of the time you see a tai chi class, there is some amount of time devoted to chi gong. I'm completely unclear on what the difference is. Chi gong has a slew of different "dance routines" and the one selected for class focus seems to be chosen randomly--- or at least the parameters are unclear to the amateur. The first one we did was extremely athletic involving a lot of up and down and touching behind our backs and the ghastly pivoting. The current one is a lot of mock anger being released with fists and stomping. They all have names that are wildly unrelated to anything anyone might see in them.
What disturbs me, having done this for several months now, is that there is a fixed, permanently fixed, shortest form and I don't know it. I found some videos online so I can watch and practice at home. But when I took ballet, you were expected to learn the vocabulary and practice at home because nothing was going to be taught again. (I sucked at ballet because there wasn't really any hope of practicing at home.) I understand that this is a rotating class, but there's really no excuse why we cannot (as regular attendees) learn a single 4 minute dance routine meeting weekly in 3 months. That's just stupid.
So I looked at the videos, I wrote down posture names (where they were specified) and made flashcards. I can keep all the named postures straight in my mind now. I'm working on writing descriptions of what those mean so I have a mental picture and can replicate it with my body's movements. I can see this taking a lifetime of daily repetition to truly master all the nuances of it, but I can't understand why it's taking a lifetime to understand what the fuck I'm supposed to be doing with my feet.
Most of the time you see a tai chi class, there is some amount of time devoted to chi gong. I'm completely unclear on what the difference is. Chi gong has a slew of different "dance routines" and the one selected for class focus seems to be chosen randomly--- or at least the parameters are unclear to the amateur. The first one we did was extremely athletic involving a lot of up and down and touching behind our backs and the ghastly pivoting. The current one is a lot of mock anger being released with fists and stomping. They all have names that are wildly unrelated to anything anyone might see in them.
What disturbs me, having done this for several months now, is that there is a fixed, permanently fixed, shortest form and I don't know it. I found some videos online so I can watch and practice at home. But when I took ballet, you were expected to learn the vocabulary and practice at home because nothing was going to be taught again. (I sucked at ballet because there wasn't really any hope of practicing at home.) I understand that this is a rotating class, but there's really no excuse why we cannot (as regular attendees) learn a single 4 minute dance routine meeting weekly in 3 months. That's just stupid.
So I looked at the videos, I wrote down posture names (where they were specified) and made flashcards. I can keep all the named postures straight in my mind now. I'm working on writing descriptions of what those mean so I have a mental picture and can replicate it with my body's movements. I can see this taking a lifetime of daily repetition to truly master all the nuances of it, but I can't understand why it's taking a lifetime to understand what the fuck I'm supposed to be doing with my feet.
