women and knives

Did a demo the other night for Berkeley's Pilipino American Alliance. It was just me and this other student, so I had to think of something creative to make our performance interesting. I usually don't do demos for the college students, but I liked the woman who asked me, so I did this one for her.

The idea of women and knives both entices and repels people. Men like the danger, women like the power. Men fear the power, women fear the danger. It has an interesting psychological effect.

In this demo, I wanted to show them that Kali is a Filipino martial art, not so much because we can trace it's lineage back to killing Magellan, because we really can't in the kind of anthropological dig kind of way that we would like, but it's a Filipino martial art, because we continue to reinvigorate that cultural energy into it. In part, I asked them to find the art that they know is already in them.

So we asked for one man, one woman out of the crowd to teach kali to, in 10 minutes or less. Tied a couple of malongs to their waists and threw them in there, not knowing where this experiment would go. Had the guy learn pari-check, a simple punch and deflect drill which he picked up really fast and got going really good.

I was paired up with the woman. She was jumpy, nervous. We practiced a bit of the pari-check as well, then I put a practice knife in her hand. Next thing you know, she's dodging, cutting, moving like a pro. Amazing!

The day before Tuhan had a seminar. He was telling folks there, it's not really about who your teacher is, but about how readily you are about accepting the kali and allowing it to enter you. In some ways, it's easier teachiing a pair of folks who have never done anything like this before, they don't have reservations about how to move or what something should be like.

The crowd cheered for their friends. We closed the demo with me sparring with sticks with my student as my malong was slipping off. Quite interesting to fight with one stick in one hand, and the other hand hanging onto the malong. And yes, I'd still win.