Martial Arts Of The World - Webs
Martial Arts Of The World - Webs Martial Arts Of The World - Webs
420 Performing Arts can be impossible to distinguish in some cases where a martial art ends and a performing art begins, as with the randai and silek of the Minangkabau of Sumatra, or Brazilian capoeira. In both these cases, so integral have the martial art and performance elements become to each other that training takes place through performance, and performance through the martial arts training. In many other cases martial arts techniques have been subsumed within, and gradually transformed into, virtuosic training and/or performance systems. One of the most obvious historical connections is that between the traditional Chinese theater (Beijing Opera), which evolved its wukung (literally, martial effort) techniques employing both hand-to-hand fighting and manipulation of halberds, lances, and swords. Seen today in the spectacular acrobatic feats and mass stylized combat displays of the Beijing stage, the process of transformation through which wu-kung stage combat and choreography developed is as yet unexplored and undocumented, if not lost in the maze of individual schools of Chinese martial traditions. Similarly, the popular Kabuki theater of Japan developed its Tachimawari or stylized fight-scene techniques associated with portrayal of samurai. In Kabuki the tateshi (fight specialist) was the acting company’s stage-fight specialist, responsible for combining various acrobatic moves, mie poses used for highly emotional dramatic effect, and specific fighting techniques brought from the martial arts into Kabuki’s exciting, fast-paced battle scenes. Even the more reserved and restrained Nô drama of Japan, the predecessor of Kabuki, was influenced by the martial arts and ways. For example, the Kita Noh tradition (one of the five main schools of acting) was born from the samurai class. Some of today’s contemporary Kita school actors compare the concentration and mental state of the Nô performer to those of the martial artist. In some plays, such as the demon play, Funa Benkei, the staging of the demon’s attack is taken from the use of sword and halberd (naginata). A third example of the close relationship between martial arts and performance is that found in India. As early as the writing of the encyclopedia of dramaturgy, Natyasastra (between 200 B.C. and A.D. 200), the link between martial techniques, performer training, and stage combat had been made. The performer is enjoined to prepared himself for the stage by taking “exercise on the floor as well as high up in the air, and should have beforehand one’s body massaged with the [sesame] oil or with barley gruel. The floor is the proper place [literally, “mother”] for exercise. Hence one should resort to the floor, and stretching oneself over it one should take exercise” (Ghosh 1956). The neophyte receives instructions to follow dietary restrictions as part of the training. The text also records the types of movement to be used for onstage “release of weapons” and use of sword
A Cossack soldier performs a dance with knives for Russian General Alexander Komaroff. A group of musicians provide accompaniment for the dancer, 1885. (Corbis) and shield, as well as other weapons in the stage combat arsenal used to enact scenes drawn from India’s great epics, the Mahabharata and Ramayana. The early Indian connection between martial and performing arts is witnessed in the legacy of extant martial and performance genres today throughout the subcontinent, from Orissa’s now refined dance genre, Seraikella chhau, which originated in martial exercises before it became a masked-dance/drama, to the kathakali dance-drama of Kerala, whose entire training, massage system, and stage combat are derived directly from its martial precursor, kalarippayattu. In addition to the symbiotic relationship between traditional Asian martial and performing arts, over the past twenty years contemporary performers both in Asia and the West have begun to make use of martial arts in training performers and as part of the development of a contemporary movement vocabulary. Among contemporary Western theater practitioners and actor trainers, A. C. Scott, Herbert Blau, and Rachel Rosenthal were some of the pioneers during the 1960s, all making use of taijiquan (tai chi ch’uan)—Scott in training performers at the Asian/Experimental Theatre Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Blau and Rosenthal in training members of their performance ensembles. Following their examples in using taijiquan, but also making use of the Indian martial art kalarippayattu, as well as yoga, in the 1970s Phillip Zarrilli began to develop a Performing Arts 421
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A Cossack soldier performs a dance with knives for Russian General Alexander Komaroff. A group of musicians provide<br />
accompaniment for the dancer, 1885. (Corbis)<br />
and shield, as well as other weapons in the stage combat arsenal used to<br />
enact scenes drawn from India’s great epics, the Mahabharata and Ramayana.<br />
<strong>The</strong> early Indian connection between martial and performing arts<br />
is witnessed in the legacy of extant martial and performance genres today<br />
throughout the subcontinent, from Orissa’s now refined dance genre,<br />
Seraikella chhau, which originated in martial exercises before it became a<br />
masked-dance/drama, to the kathakali dance-drama of Kerala, whose entire<br />
training, massage system, and stage combat are derived directly from<br />
its martial precursor, kalarippayattu.<br />
In addition to the symbiotic relationship between traditional Asian<br />
martial and performing arts, over the past twenty years contemporary performers<br />
both in Asia and the West have begun to make use of martial arts<br />
in training performers and as part of the development of a contemporary<br />
movement vocabulary. Among contemporary Western theater practitioners<br />
and actor trainers, A. C. Scott, Herbert Blau, and Rachel Rosenthal were<br />
some of the pioneers during the 1960s, all making use of taijiquan (tai chi<br />
ch’uan)—Scott in training performers at the Asian/Experimental <strong>The</strong>atre<br />
Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Blau and Rosenthal in<br />
training members of their performance ensembles. Following their examples<br />
in using taijiquan, but also making use of the Indian martial art kalarippayattu,<br />
as well as yoga, in the 1970s Phillip Zarrilli began to develop a<br />
Performing <strong>Arts</strong> 421