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New generation learns ancient art
By Rita Wold
rwold@mscd.edu

Photo by Geof Wollerman • gwollerm@mscd.edu Members of the Shaolin Hung Mei Kung Fu school perform the lion dance during the masters’ demonstration on April 14 at the Zhang San Feng festival in the Auraria Event Center. The performance was part of an exhibition for a competition that will take place next year and in preparation for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Tai Chi and Wu Shu, styles of martial arts, will be featured as sports in the 2008 Olympics.

Auraria will make history in April 2008 when it presents the nation’s first Zhang San Feng All Tai Chi and Wu Shu Classic tournament, according to an announcement made April 14 during the Zhang San Festival at the Auraria Events Center.

The Zhang San Festival has been celebrated every year since 1992 in honor of the founder of tai chi, Zhang San Feng. Master Christophe Clarke started the festival to unite tai chi practitioners in celebrating the founder’s birthday.

“I want to give them a taste of what is going to come,” Clarke said regarding the festival’s goals. Clarke and other organizers will have an entire year to prepare for the upcoming tournament and have high hopes for its success. “You haven’t seen nothing yet,” he said.

Joe Brady, a tai chi instructor at Auraria, helped host this year’s festival, which was composed of competitions, workshops and professional demonstrations.

It included the lion dance, a Chinese art performed with two people moving like a lion underneath a costume, to the beat of percussion instruments. The tai chi demonstrations involved slow movements that began with the feet and hands, and sword tricks that utilized a blend of gymnastics and ballet.

Tai chi is known as a therapeutic exercise and as a self-defense method. It will include boxing when it is introduced at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Calling it a “competition of pure skill,” Clarke said the upcoming tournament is designed to make the principles of tai chi and kung fu shine. These principles include being relaxed, moving slowly, improving circulation and moving the body as a unit, he said.

As a former member of the U.S. kung fu team, Clarke won the gold medal in 1990 and 1996.
He has worked with the Denver Broncos on coordination and visualization techniques, and also with the FBI teaching their SWAT team martial arts techniques. The West Indies native has practiced tai chi for 34 years and has starred in five martial arts films.

“My body is very fluid as a result (of tai chi),” said Diane Carrick, 76, a student of Brady’s who has been practicing the art for eight years.

She loves the Chinese form and the age variety that was displayed at the festival, she said.

“What we are doing is bringing the community and the world we believe in – the one denomination – together,” Clarke said regarding the diversity displayed at the festival. “Tai chi is something to promote on this earth. We are earth links. We are part of one race, the human race.”

Festival performer Shane Wang said he started practicing tai chi after seeing how it built character in his 15-year-old son. They both attend Shaolin Hung Mei Kung Fu, a Boulder-based organization.

“It brought the family closer together,” said Wang’s son, David.

Learning to balance and harmonize is what drew Clarke to tai chi, he said.

“It’s about learning to deal with your ego, your arrogance, your conceit, learning to control your behavior,” he said, adding that the true war is “the demons that we have inside ourselves. We must learn to defeat those demons.