Our first Oriental Arts Day took place on Saturday June 14th
at Walton Village Hall, near Street, Somerset. It was a small and humble event but we were blessed by great weather and a
relaxed ambience. The day began with Mark Pogson leading the audience through various Chi Gung exercises.
|
| MARK POGSON - CHI GUNG - AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION |
Next we had many tai chi and kung fu demonstrations by Linda
Griffiths' 'Glastonbury Dragons'
|
| GLASTONBURY DRAGONS |
|
| LINDA GRIFFITHS |
|
| ROB |
|
| TAI CHI FAN DUET |
After the demonstations by the 'Glastonbury Dragons' Yuri Leitch lead
the audience through some basic Silk Reeling movement techniques - before everyone had a 30 minute rest for lunch.
|
| SILK REELING |
After lunch Yuri's 'Tai Chi Glastonbury' gave some demonstrations
of Chen style hand and weapon forms.
|
| BUDDHA'S WARRIORS POUND THE MORTAR |
|
| MALCOLM AND YURI - CHEN STYLE BROADSWORD |
After the Chen style demonstrations we had some brilliant entertainment
with the children of Jae Willis' 'Somerset Training Centre for Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan'. Sadly we cannot show any photos of
this event as some parents requested that photos for the intenet were not to be taken... but the kids were great, well disciplined
and good natured with great spirits - it was a great event.
The last demonstration of the day was a short introduction to
the Chinese martial art of Wingchun - after which (because there was still an hour of time left) Yuri did some more Silk Reeling
exercises with those members of the audience who were not too busy eating Linda the Loaf's wonderful organic cakes!
|
| ANDY AND CHARLIE OF THE 'wINGCHUN BOXING COLLECTIVE' |
The day was smaller than we had hoped for, with small demonstration
troops and a small audience but it really was a great chilled out atmosphere. In many ways this first attempt was a dummy
run. Next year, more time and money will be spent promoting the event and we will also attempt to spread our net wider
(throughout Somerset) and bring in demonstrations from many other oriental martial arts schools... it was a day for learning
how to run an event like this and next year will be bigger!
