The students in my class probably heard me speaking of some disappointing activities at a recent tournament. Although nobody from my school competed, we did have one person present as a judge who reported back that one school was performing one of our forms. Not only were they performing it, but they were performing it poorly. The school that is now performing Black Dragon Sword should be ashamed of themselves and their instructor has shown that they have no real grasp of what it means to be an instructor or martial artist.
We would like to give the benefit of the doubt that it is possible that they learned it just as I did but unfortunately I know this is impossible. The only other people who had the opportunity to learn this form are in New York and the version they do is slightly different so unless Grandmaster Chan Tai San came back from the dead to teach these "martial artists" I am going to have to say that it was stolen. It is definitely tempting to take videos of my students as they win gold medals at the national championship and try to replicate but in my 20+ years of teaching, I have never seen a school desperate enough to do it.
I will not mention the school but I have seen them perform and I totally understand why they would need to steal as what they have is not impressive. What they do could be impressive if done properly but the instructor is not equipped to teach the class to be what they need to be. Unfortunately there are no barriers on who becomes a Kung Fu instructor and in Canada we do not have old school masters who will come tear down your school and issue a challenge to those that do not belong so this type of school is allowed to continue.
My last word to this school. Focus on being good at your own style and making your ancestors proud instead of feeling the need to steal from other styles. If you are not capable of getting good at your style because you were not raised in a proper martial arts background, I am sure I can recommend an instructor that would be happy to teach you...you might even become decent at a kung fu style.
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5 comments:
I know other instructors that this has happened to and it is always disappointing to find out. I hope for your sake they are doing such a poor job copying your form that no one will compare it to yours.
I will start by your comment on verifying sources. I think that someone that was your senior in my school is a pretty solid source, especially since you just verified that they were there and saw it with their own eyes. The witness stated that you did not know the school performing so I guess you were embarrassed about being involved in passing the form to these people. You have not been with our school/system for years and I have not seen you teach or perform this form during that time so will not automatically assume that you remember it correctly no matter how many times you did it years ago.
If a form is performed poorly for a quarter of it, then the form will not be an exceptional form especially in a world where 1 or 2 glaring mistakes in a form can cost you a tournament. A quarter of a longer form is plenty of time to know if it is performed well or not regardless of the experience level of the performer. Even novice level practitioners can perform well.
As far as all the movements of the form being correct, you just contradicted yourself as you said you only saw the last quarter of the form. Thanks for verifying your credibility within your own response.
Please do not respond again as I wouldn't want your comments to "come back to bite you" and I am definitely not interested in debating this further. The forms you were taught at our school were passed on to you. If you choose to teach them as an extension of your current curriculum, that is your choice.
Post deleted as the poster has decided to ignore the request to not respond.
I now know all the facts that are necessary including the proof of how much "respect" you show someone that you called an instructor. I'm sure that you would make all martial artists proud. No matter how hard you try to change the story to further your cause of trying to run a commercial school, your instructors past or present are your instructors.
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