With a broadsword in his hands, Mikey Tsai is one of the best martial artists in the country. His blade swishes through the air as he whips it around his body and lunges with crisp, quick strikes.
He’s only a sophomore at the university, but Tsai and many of his TerpWushu teammates are top-ranked college competitors.
The team finally had its chance to exhibit their extraordinary skills Sunday night at the Hoff Theater, wowing the audience with acrobatic, high-flying kicks and awe-inspiring flips and twists.
The martial arts group, founded in 2003, boasts several U.S. national team members who compete against world-class talent. However, they had never held a large-scale solo demonstration until yesterday.
Modern wushu, a type of Chinese martial arts, is the performance version of the combat techniques, designed to dazzle rather than defend. Although the wushu moves have a practical inspiration, the entertainment value is paramount to actual fighting.
“Wushu is definitely more of the ‘art’ side of martial arts,” graduate student member Charles Song said. “Fighting is about going against someone else, but wushu is more about pushing yourself to be better.”
But just because TerpWushu participants don’t spar with each other doesn’t mean they don’t compete. The student-run group is a competition-oriented squad that practices their complex routines up to six hours per week. In a collegiate championship at Stanford University in March, TerpWushu placed third as a team and took home 19 individual medals.
TerpWushu’s top members also compete internationally, have trained in China and may be attending the World Championships in Beijing, a competition taking place at the same time as the Olympics.
However, team members has found that putting on their own show requires a little more group coordination than getting ready for a series of individual routines.
“Doing this show is very different from doing a competition,” Tsai said. “In a competition, if you feel prepared yourself, you’re fine. In the show, everybody has to do certain things together at the same time, so it’s a more detail-oriented plan.”
The performance was a showcase of regional wushu styles and gymnastic ability. The set ranged from an array of mid-air somersaulting and twirling to brandishing tasseled swords in each hand and spinning them with a colorful flourish, all to the rhythm of frenetic techno.
Wushu is characteristically wild and at times can seem chaotic. But everything about the show is controlled and very disciplined – all the moves and combinations are choreographed in advance, and there is no room for improvisation.
“Wushu is pretty inflexible,” Tsai said. “People can design their own forms, but everything is pretty set beforehand.”
The art requires incredible flexibility and strength, more so than other martial arts styles, members said. A wushu performer’s most common tricks are to kick their own outstretched palm or stretch their leg above their head.
The group created choreographed fight scenes that demonstrated a more practical set of defensive techniques. But it was purely for fun, TerpWushu president Jason Liu said.
“That’s one of the nice things about doing a show,” Liu said. “We don’t have to worry about being so technically correct. We can just kind of relax and have a good time.”
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