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 2000, a number of factors converged to give us a smaller group of people able to put up major performances, so we dropped our number of segments to four. Allen opened up with "Hong Chuan", a Nothern Mantis version of a Hung Gar Kuen version of a Lau Gar Kuen form (got all that?). I followed it up with a Wushu straightsword form that we've kind of adopted into our system. This year, I began choosing my own music, allowing myself to get away from techno music - it's blood pumping and appropriate for a martial arts performance, but I simply never liked it. I took it in a totally different direction this time, slowing the form down and using slow music. We when picked the pace way up and Allen and I performed a frenetic staff fight that we'd spent months putting together. The growth from previous years is obvious here, since this fight is very fast, flows better than any from the previous years, and has fewer slow spots. We then had a break until the second half of the show. For my Senior Year, I wanted to go out with something more spectacular, so a bunch of us put together a more elaborate scenario-based fight scene. Through my training, we've always used the cliche of "if you're waitinging at the bus stop..." (used to explain how you'd normally be caught unawares in a real fight situation), so I wanted to set the fight at a bus stop as an inside joke among martial artists (many people I know from other systems are just as familiar with the bus stop cliche). I dressed up in a suit, and fought off a gang of thugs with my briefcase and an old man's cane. In many ways, this is the segment I've always been most proud of. Sure, there are some spots where one of us forgot a move and slowed it down, and a spot where it slowed because I accidentally bloodied Allen's lip with the cane, but the whole thing went off really well - and I didn't rip my suit. :)
Copyright © 2006 Erik Harris.