Those of you who know me remember that I grew up dancing–I have a special place in my heart for amazing dance, whether it’s modern or jazz. Ballet even. Ask my Mom to tell you about me and the Nutcracker ballet. Anyway, thanks to Miss Cellania of stellar blog mental_floss for linking to this lovely medley of movie dances. I recognize most of them. Love em all. Enjoy! ~Jenn
Came across this article at APEX Movement’s website re: Parkour practitioners (traceurs) and how
they interact with the environment. I appreciated the sentiment here, and was reminded how the ancient ninja of Japan would be thought of as sorcerers because of their extreme attention and at-one-ness with their surroundings. ~Jenn
Saw this Japanese wall-run moment on Regis & Kelly this morning. Well done, sir! ~Jenn
There will be more up here re: the Summer Stage Combat Class’ trip down to APEX Movement Studios today. For now, enjoy this picture of Scott floating down from a vault. Thanks again, Ryan and APEX folks! We all had a blast! ~Jenn
Tonight at 6pm is the last time I will be teaching NinjaFit at the Boulder Quest Center. It’s been a
NinjaFit obstacle course
lovely journey into fitness with all those folks.
I first designed the NinjaFit class as a cross-training opportunity for especially those martial artists that need to keep up their “fightin’ trim” selves outside of the martial arts classes themselves. I also wanted to design an unusual class that would target whole-body workouts as well as gently teach something about the ninja arts without it being a martial arts class. I wanted also to have one class that could encompass all my various movement expertises into one experience.
Here are some of the many movement conditioning systems that I include in NinjaFit:
medicine ball yoga
I hope any of you lovely lurkers who are local can stop by and sample this fitness smorgasbord–tonight is your last chance!
Stellar blog mental_floss posted this video of some Chinese acrobats today, with much-deserved
praise. This stuff is amazing to see live–have you ever seen Chinese acrobatics like this in person? It’s astonishing. It’s super-power-like. Same with the very dance-y kung fu demonstrations the shaolin monks often tour with. ~Jenn
I like what fellow stage combat blogger Kevin Inouye had to say the other day re: falling. He’s done more stunt-y-type falls than I have, but even as a martial artist I do tend to take some bigger falls than most actors have to normally. I was musing about this last Saturday in Stage Movement class as I watched the students do the falls they had learned previously on mats, on the wooden stage floor. I noticed immediately how much more aware and careful they were automatically than when they were on the mats. That’s why I always start out teaching stage falls on “normal” stage floors: mats give one a certain amount of false security–they certainly have enough leeway that you can be a tad sloppy and not pay the price. That said, martial arts break falls, and any fall from any kind of height shouldn’t be done without padding at all. And I do tend to teach rolls on mats first, for the same reason–it gives a certain level of comfort to a beginner. ~Jenn
From Mr. Inouye post re: falling with full stunt padding vs. not:
…you still need to know how to take a fall at least to some degree, to avoid things like broken wrists, cracked heads, etc, but it sure is nice to have the option of padding up. Comparing it to the fall I took two days later when the ladder I was on while fixing up my house slipped and fell from under me- I’ll take the repeated but pre-planned stunt fall with padding any day.
Behold the loveliness of the Clownlympics tableaux from MSCD’s Stage Movement class yesterday! Nice work, clowns! ~Jenn
Yesterday we didn’t do a blog post (booo), but it was National Handwriting Day (yaaaay)! So, to try and make up for a missed day, consider yourself Nickrolled, lovely lurkers! (handwriting is Jenn’s–she switched to all-caps a while ago but that’s a long story)… ~Jenn
on the whiteboard at Stage Combat Club, 2009
