Is Learning a Martial Art like Learning a Language?
/Last night my Ghanaian Dance group got an infusion of new dancers at the same time as two master drummers returned to the group. The new dancers were from Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Brazil. They are attending an interpreters educational immersion school here in Boulder. The group is spectacularly fun, energetic, positive, and deep.
It got me thinking, I am a kind of dance-movement interpreter. Learning a new culture’s movement system, whether we dub it dance or martial art, is like learning a new language.
Just like cross-training is a good idea for anyone who uses their body a lot, cross-cultural training is a good idea for anyone who uses their mind-body a lot.
I became a dancer because it was the hardest thing I ever tried to do, emotionally, physically, intellectually. Part of the reason I lump martial arts in with dance is because it covers the same realms of depth in all the cultures of movement I have studied.
Should Chinese martial-artists study some kind of African dance? Is it the antidote to nearly every problem? Let’s list them, okay?
Lack of whole body unity
Slow footwork
Power-generation oriented shenfa (torso movement)
Poor facility with Rhythm and Entrainment
Inward focus of attention
Lack of facility moving the center of mass quickly
Fear of looking beautiful
Fear of looking silly
Seriousness to the point of damaging the spirit
Obsession with applications
Obsession with social dominance
Adherence to a culturally poor narrative of creation
Alright, let’s sketch this out.
Picking up a single African dance movement begins with trying to get the feet to step in the right place, in rhythm. Usually this is followed by figuring out how the torso movement supports this pattern. At this point everything else must fall into place or you don’t get it: 1) The emptiness of the arms, 2) entrainment and counter-entrainment with the drumming, 3) the pattern of the center of mass moving over the feet, 4) a pulse or pattern around which the movement organizes, and initiates, which “fits” inside the polyrhythms the drums are producing in space. The next movement, which has all the same requirements in a new form, will be cued by a drum call, which you have to hear and feel in order to make the transition.
All that is impossible to achieve without whole body unity, so it is a prerequisite of most African dance.
Simply moving the feet quickly is good, but the capacity to move the feet quickly between different floor patterns and rhythms is better and, as a skill, is infinitely more adaptable to the chaos of fighting.
One of the biggest problems I see in Chinese martial arts is the use of the torso to generate outward power. (Sometimes people even advocate using the spine to generate power, terrible.) Over the longterm this error causes structural injury and loss of mobility. Rather than increasing power, it limits it. Superior fighting uses 100% of our mass. African dance movements use 100% of our mass too, and usually control it with movement of the torso oriented in rhythmic spatial-patterns. That also fixes the problem of being inwardly focussed. Chinese martial artists sometimes become inwardly focussed because they lack a performance orientation or because they are searching for power inside their bodies.
The other points should be obvious. Let me jump to the last one.
My biggest complaint about Chinese martial arts has been the loss of connection to its own roots in mythology and enriching theatrical narratives. Cross-cultural movement studies might be a quick way to solve this. When you find yourself doing an abstract form of whole-body mime embedded in a narrative-ritual from a culture not your own, and then notice that is is pretty much exactly like a martial arts technique you know, things fall apart. What falls apart? Adherence to a culturally limiting narrative of creation, utility, and purpose.
