This is my attempt at turning the China Night DVD I made into a web site. The videos are hosted on YouTube, so you'll need Macromedia Flash in order to view them. There are some minor issues with Internet Explorer and this "WebDVD" that I haven't been able to work out yet. If anyone knows why, feel free to drop me a line. Otherwise, consider it yet another good reason to switch to Firefox. :)
In 1998, the Shaolin Kung Fu Association at Cornell was given the unique opportunity by an officer in Cornell University's Chinese Students Association to put together a performance for the organization's annual China Night event, one of the largest events regularly held at Cornell University, sometimes bringing over 1000 people to Bailey Auditorium. We were graciously allowed to put together a performance with no audition and no questions asked. We'd never choreographed a fight before, and Noshir and I literally spent months putting a fight together with a three-section staff and a staff. Bits were put in, tossed out, moved around, etc, until we had something that flowed reasonably well. We were especially lucky that we didn't have to audition, because we were still putting the fight together a week before the show, and still tweaking it the day of the performance. Noshir and I were visibly nervous about the performance in front of a large crowd, but we pulled it off. Noshir opened the performance with a form that he learned from Eddie's Hung Gar curriculum, and I followed with a broadsword form from my system. Eddie was no stranger to performances, and had assembled and performed routines in front of audiences before, so instead of going with a form from his Hung Gar tradition, he created a Spear form with a bit more flair for a general audience. After practicing the form hundreds of times flawlessly, he dropped the spear on stage, but kept going, finishing the form stronger than he'd started it.
Copyright © 2006 Erik Harris.