The difference between.....

There's a fundamental difference, I realized last night, between showing an art, and marketing it.

And make no mistake about this one, there's a reason why they're called the martial arts. How someone can watch our SiFu go through one of his weapons forms and not describe it as an art form is beyond me. It's like a dance. Poetry in motion.

But that's not what I want to talk about, really.

We did a Kung Fu demonstration last night at the Devonian Gardens in Calgary. Lots and lots of fun was had, and we had a great opportunity to show the art.

We were not, however, the only martial arts group there. One of the local Hap Ki Do schools was also doing a demonstration, so we got to see a little bit of their show.

Now, don't get me wrong, these people (a lot of young kids in their group, by the way; they looked to have an average age of about 16) were remarkable athletes; but somewhere along the line they'd lost the art, and were basically trying to sell it to the people watching. Flashy music, staged fight sequences, kicking demonstrations; all very impressive looking, but at the end of the day, that's not what the art is about.

Now, granted, when we demonstrate our forms, we do have Chinese drums, gongs, and cymbals playing; but that's because that's how it's traditionally done. I think it has something to do with the idea that if you can focus enough to do your form with a really loud racket distracting you (and believe me, those drums can be pretty damned distracting), you can use these skills when you need them. Or at least, that's the explanation that makes the most sense to me; I mean there has to be some reason it's been done that way for 500 years. The bottom line is that we were showing what the art is. We weren't trying to sell it. If people approached us afterwards, we had some business cards to offer them, whereas the other school had pamphlets that they handed out to every one in attendance. We took this opportunity to show our skills, they took it to sell their school.

Of course, I commented to my Daai Si Ying that I felt horribly undisciplined as I watched these 16-year-olds going through their warmup in perfect unison. We, by contrast, were sitting on the bench he was about to use to break some rocks, leaning casually against the railing behind us. Some of our school was out there doing some situps, doing an impromptu warmup, or running through a form. Every once in a while one of our school members would smack another and they'd start sparring; but really, there was no real rhyme or reason to it. They had sixteen students there, standing in a perfect 4 x 4 square, throwing a series of punches in perfect unison; doing a series of push-ups and sit-ups on one count, throwing a series of kicks right together.

Yeah, we don't do that.

But it works just fine for us.