When you see someone “doing tai chi,” the verb for what they’re up to is often “performing.” This is certainly what we do when we’re learning the form. It’s like choreography; the tai chi player is doing what they’ve been taught to do, and doing this the best they can. After a while, though – when the form itself is familiar, when we don’t have to be told what to do next, and when we’ve begun to understand the energy and applications, “performing” isn’t such a good word.
A better word for what we’re up to at this stage is “expressing.” We’re expressing how we feel, how the energy is moving through us, how we interpret what a given posture/transition means to us at that moment - you've heard me say I don't do "Cloud Hands" the same way twice in the form. It’s a good word for what the form looks like when we’re competent and comfortable in it. I prefer the term “competence” over “mastery” because the latter word is loaded with extra meanings, and because in a real sense, learning to “express” the form is itself a step toward mastery. Expression comes first.
Over the last few years, I’ve shared images and videos of several Masters expressing the form. Some, like Yang Chengfu and Chen Weiming, were photographed but never filmed; and those before Yang Chengfu were never photographed. Some of the Masters were more apprehensive about being filmed than others. We are told Yang Zhenduo was reluctant to be filmed, because he understood that the film would simply show how he felt and expressed the form on that day and at that moment, but future students would consider it "The Video of Record" and attempt to copy him as exactly as possible. This reluctance on the part of Yang Zhenduo shows his wisdom in understanding both the art itself and his role as Grandmaster and Lineage Holder.
When we watch a Master expressing the form or study photographs – whether it be of the Traditional “Long” Form, a shorter one within the Yang curriculum or one he came up with himself – we do well to take a number of things into account:
The age of the Master
There are but few films of Fu
Zhongwen expressing the form – perhaps no more than three, and they were all
made toward the later part of his life. Same
goes for the films of Cheng Manching.
Compare their expressions to those of Yang Jun or Yang Zhenduo when he
was younger; or even one of Yang Zhenduo at a younger and a more senior age.
The state of the art at the
time
One of the privileges of the
Grandmaster – one we don’t talk about much but it’s there nonetheless – is that
of interpreting the legacy he’s been given, as he sees fit to interpret
it. Tai chi has always evolved, grown
and transformed, within the context of the Ten Essential Principles and the
nature of martial arts generally.
What the Master wanted to
communicate
This is a difficult thing to
puzzle out, especially if we don’t spend much time reading what this-or-that
Master has said about the art. Nearly
all the Lineage Holders left a written account of their thoughts on the art,
and it’s important to read them – tai chi is a thinking person’s martial
art. I submit that these records are at
the very least complementary to the films and photos, and in many ways
superior, simply because we can’t always know what the Master had in mind in
filming. Some, like Yang Chengfu, Yang
Zhenduo or Yang Jun, understood they were preparing study materials their
students would scrutinize.
Some films may have simply been aids-to-memory and not a “video of record.” Cheng Manching’s most widely-viewed video of his 37-posture form has this sense to it. Superficially the form appears languid compared to others. A shallow, discourteous critic might go so far as to say it looked careless or lazy. But look more closely – you’ll see very clearly that every last one of the Ten Essential Principles is perfectly expressed – only without the outward power of Yang Chengfu, the effortless grace of Yang Zhenduo, the liveliness of Choy Hok Pang or the thoughtful precision of Yang Jun. And that may well have been all he cared to communicate in the film – he may well have considered anything else to be something best taught in class or discovered by the student themselves.
This last point deserves a bit of expansion. Anyone who’s been in a tai chi class has learned that there’s a lot to know about the art – you simply can’t learn tai chi from imitating what you see on a video. No teacher can teach another student just by preparing a video; no matter how high-quality the video or the instruction in it, the teacher can’t see what the student is doing. Trying to teach tai chi exclusively by video is about as futile as trying to teach Pacific Islanders ballroom dancing over a shortwave radio.
Take a look at this composite photo of seven Masters, all doing Brush Left Knee and Push:
In it we see, from left-to-right:
Yang Chengfu
Chen Weiming
Fu Zhongwen
Cheng Manching
Choy Hok Pang
Yang Zhenduo
Yang Jun
They’re all doing the same thing, but there’s something different and unique to each. Each of them is “right” and none of them is in any way “wrong.” Each has something to teach us, but only one of the men in this composite is still alive to say what he’s up to in it. Each – whether part of a photo series or part of a film or video – becomes clearer when we read what the Masters had to say about the art. Each is a reflection of how a given Master expressed his tai chi on that day and at that moment. We owe it to them, to their legacy and to ourselves, to understand the nature of these visual documents, and what they do and don’t show.
