“When you get a black belt ranking it doesn’t mean you’ve gotten a foot in the door.  It means you have learned how to find the doorknob.”

-DAVE LOWRY, Traditions:  Essays on the Japanese Martial Arts and Ways

Did you know that Taichi* can improve your strength, agility, flexibility, coordination and fluid motion—even if you are already a high level dancer or athlete? Of course, you can be at any level to benefit from this highly dynamic martial art.

Class Description:

• We will be learning how to translate force efficiently and therefore, powerfully, through your entire body—all while staying balanced and centered.
• We will also explore the dynamics of quick directional changes and how to coordinate each minute movement of your feet with the movement of your knees and hips (and vice versa)…each minute movement of your knees and hips with the movement of your pelvis and trunk (and vice versa)…each minute movement of your pelvis and trunk with the movement of your neck, shoulders, arms and hands (and vice versa).
• We will compare how movements from Taichi/martial arts are similar to, yet fundamentally different from those performed in dance and athletics. In doing so, we will begin to see how movements from from Taichi/martial arts can crossover to and thus, enrich the movements performed in dance and athletics.

What to Expect:

• Dancers can expect to expand their movement repertoire in far reaching ways—discovering, perhaps for the first time, the intrinsic dance of martial arts.
• Athletes can expect to improvements in power, agility, coordination and fluid motion.
• Both can expect to learn ways to move that protect the entire spine as well as the knees and ankles (and other joints).

Read an article by Stacy Barrows published in the Huffington Post after she attended a series of Edward’s Taichi classes.

*Note that Taichi is shorthand for T’ai chi ch’uan. Modern transliterations for the word include:  Taiji, Taijiquan.