Juggling - must see

Discussion on the three big Chinese internals, Yiquan, Bajiquan, Piguazhang and other similar styles.

Juggling - must see

Postby nianfong on Tue May 13, 2008 5:19 pm

Posted by: bailewen Posted on: May 8th, 2008, 11:47pm
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/260


This almost should go in the main forum.

Oh yeah, and make sure the sound is on.
Posted by: Zhong Kui Posted on: May 9th, 2008, 12:03am
I get a japanese anime.
Posted by: bailewen Posted on: May 9th, 2008, 12:18am
fixed.
Posted by: Mut_Sao Posted on: May 9th, 2008, 7:03am
FANTASTIC!!!!

thank you for posting this link Omar 37 minutes gone in the blink of an eye Cheesy
Posted by: Darth Rock-n-Roll Posted on: May 9th, 2008, 7:14am
study of skill is a worthy direction.

guy would be good at kungfu i bet if he chose to apply himself to it as much as he did juggling.

im guessing that perhaps tiger put him off golf? lol
Posted by: bailewen Posted on: May 9th, 2008, 7:36am
on May 9th, 2008, 7:03am, Mut_Sao wrote:
FANTASTIC!!!!

thank you for posting this link Omar 37 minutes gone in the blink of an eye Cheesy


I did the same thing. I only intended to watch a little bit when I saw how long it was gonna be but I ended up just glued to the screen and watched it right through.

Listening to him talk was really something too. Sounds like an IMA guy, all that talk about working with space and learning to "understand down and up" and so on.
Posted by: Teazer Posted on: May 9th, 2008, 9:14am
MM does very excellent stuff (with the exception of trying to copyright contact juggling!). Didn't know he'd done a TED talk.
Posted by: ashe Posted on: May 9th, 2008, 12:26pm
that guys knows exactly where his hands are!

"play with skill
play with space
play with rythmn"

that almost sums up IMA. too bad he went into stupid human tricks instead! Cheesy

i'm stealing so much stuff from this guy!
Posted by: bailewen Posted on: May 9th, 2008, 3:06pm
Like I said, it almost belongs in the main forum.

When I posted it originally I hadn't even finished watching it yet so I didn't realize what an incredible talk he was going to give. I love when he's talking about "learning to understand up and down" and exploring "down" as a direction in juggling. Then he says, "...now that you have the whole 'spatial palate'...."

Much of how he "explores shapes" seems so incredibly close to what we are doing here. Great loose connection. Check out his horse in the triangle juggling. Fantastic dan tian work there.
Posted by: Dmitri Posted on: May 9th, 2008, 4:49pm
Thanks for posting this! Cool

From the moment he walked in -- his 'open' shoulders, relaxation, etc. Very cool.
Posted by: ashe Posted on: May 9th, 2008, 11:28pm
on May 9th, 2008, 3:06pm, bailewen wrote:
Like I said, it almost belongs in the main forum.


i think it does. at least, i think it has the possibility to spark some interesting conversation so i'm going to move it there and see what happens.
Posted by: Mut_Sao Posted on: May 10th, 2008, 12:06am
yeah his talk was excellent also. I love the simple 3 ball patterns done so well. It is often when you see someone do the simple so well that you can really appreciate the skill. And then when he moved on to some of the other stuff.... just awesome.

i used to juggle alot, most of his 3 ball patterns i can (well could) do, but never that clean
Posted by: internalenthusiast Posted on: May 10th, 2008, 12:51am
thanks, omar.

great lecture/dem. i enjoy michael moschen.

there's so much there: direction, rhythm/counterpoint, shape, geometry, positive/negative space, center and pulse, etc., etc.

it's like kinesthetic music.

too much there to comment directly. one could take any of his sections of his demo, and discourse at length on the connections with MA, push hands, etc.

it's all there, in a different art form.

thanks for posting.





Posted by: nianfong Posted on: May 10th, 2008, 1:42am
this presentation was so awesome. thanks for posting it omar.

-Fong
Posted by: count Posted on: May 10th, 2008, 5:57am
Naaaa, I'm voting this back to off the topic. The obvious difference is intent. Sure, the process of internalizing skills may be relevant, but like he said, juggling is a "sub-culture" by itself.

Good find and post though. Sure made me want to get out the balls, cane, clubs, and hats again. Wink
Posted by: Walk_the_Torque Posted on: May 10th, 2008, 8:01am
Well I gotta say this takes me back Cheesy

I used to live in a house of jugglers in my teens. The five of us would do hours of five man passing paterns, play table football/fuse ball (we bought one to see how insane the skills could get; hacky sack, go board and oh yeah we were all free style frisbee champions at one point or another. It was a lot of fun in that house.

All those years of playing around with that stuff very much coloured my approach to martial arts; things/forces moving through time and space and all that jazz.

In fact I will venture to say that there is very little difference between any of this stuff and martial arts (at a certain level) because it is all about exploring those excact same things. There may be the fear thing to get over in fighting, but exploration can put one in a certain frame of mind so as to loose focus on that too.

Just off the top of my head

P.S. thanks for posting. Totally enjoyed it Grin
Posted by: ashe Posted on: May 10th, 2008, 8:41am
instead of looking at the differences, let's look at the sameness.

skill with motion.

let me phrase it in the form of two questions;

a) what can we borrow from this guy in terms of presenting what we do to the general public? this is something really important IMO, and this guy has is down.

b) this guys demo can almost be a parable for what to look for in a teacher, or what to look for in ourselves as teachers.

what are the qualities?

for the second question, my answer is that this guy (for his art) has the qualities of shen, ke yi.

this is something that my Sifu talks about a lot.

can he do it?

if he can't do it, he can't teach you how to do it, since these arts need to be transmitted by touch.

does he really understand what he's doing?

if he doesn't understand what he's really doing, chances are he's just trained up a reflex and probably can't teach you.

can he explain it?

if he can do it, and he really understands it, he should be able to explain it to you, in depth, from a multitude of angles.

that's a quality that this guy has in spades. he talks easily, at length and in an engaging manner about what he does and he can break the complex movements down into simple patterns (like with the multi-colored balls)
Posted by: bailewen Posted on: May 10th, 2008, 9:52am
That's the thing that got my attention pulled in so deep.

It's the way he explains things. I tend to think of one of the the most characteristic traits of IMA is the strong tendency to classify everything in terms of vectors and force patterns rather than techniques. That made his little step by step run down of different juggling "tricks" so interesting. The way he breaks things down into up, down, horizontal, rythm, space etc.

The general description of learning was interesting too. Talking about how things slow down and that little exercise with the fingers just to get the audience involved and to demonstrate a "learning state".
Posted by: 8gua Posted on: May 11th, 2008, 6:25am
that was great....great website as well, lots of good content...thanks for the hook up
Posted by: bailewen Posted on: May 11th, 2008, 8:54am
My dad just recently introduced me to ted.com.

It's a pretty amazing site. He told me about it months ago but for some reason it never caught my eye. After watching the juggling bit I'm now cruising it more than ever. I don't own a TV so I like having decent "webTV".

Cruising through other clips, I stumbled onto another one that is relevant in a similar way that the juggler is. This one is about listening, one of the primary skills of IMA and what's more, about 6 minutes in she starts talking about how tension weakens connection and I haven't finished it yet but I like where she seems to be going with this whole listening thing.

How to listen to music with your whole body:

http://www.ted.com/talks/view?id=103
Posted by: internalenthusiast Posted on: May 11th, 2008, 5:04pm
she's great; and yes i think this stuff applies, too. Smiley
Posted by: Kurt Robbins Posted on: May 11th, 2008, 5:37pm
There is more value in finding whats similar than whats different - why does intent have to define the only comparrison of functuion. If the mechanics of an Americanca work for torque extention on a building why should intent take away from it. One of the mian problems with martial arts is seeing differences instead of similarities.
Good find Omar -
Posted by: Ben Posted on: May 12th, 2008, 6:26pm
Thanks for sharing Omar. I spent a while today listening to different things and loved it. Smiley
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Re: Juggling - must see

Postby Walk the Torque on Tue May 13, 2008 9:24 pm

Another similarity was when the guy balances the pencil on his face saying something to the effect of the the more skill one has the smaller the movements.
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Re: Juggling - must see

Postby bailewen on Tue May 13, 2008 10:58 pm

Thanks dudes.

I'm glad people enjoyed and related to that thing as much as I did.

I was just rereading it and remembered, yeah, the balancing ever smaller and smaller things was another interesting metaphor for what we try to do with this IMA stuff.
Click here for my Baji Leitai clip.
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