Prague still retains some of the mystery and Old Worlde flavour of the days of Franz Kafka (some crazy guy; “Metamorphosis” has the all time great opening line where the protagonist wakes up to find he has turned into a giant bug; we’ve all been there, right?) and Hasek (anarchist and creator of “The Good Soldier Svejk”) and this was the venue of the 4th European Forum & Congress. TCUGB instructors selected to teach at the Forum included our esteemed editor, Eva & Karel Koskuba, and me, while members Peter Ballam (with friends) participated in the workshops.
This time round there were a lot of Chen style teachers, including organiser, Vit Vojta, and his wife, Song Feng-yun, who gave a knockout performance of Chinese folk songs at the farewell party with a Czech rock band called Gong Bao who sing most of their stuff in Chinese. Other old colleagues like Anya Meot, Marianne Plouvier and Antoine Lee from France, Georgi Denichin from Bulgaria and Roswitha Flucher from Austria (by no means the worse dancer in Europe) were also teaching.
Fortunately the food was military and not prison standard, though naturally not the kind of stuff you’d make at home or order in a restaurant.
It took a few days, but after a slow start the ice began to melt between the great nations of Europe. As well as workshops we also had demos from the teachers, including individual approaches and applications of techniques such as Single Whip and Parting Wild Horse’s Mane we used a similar approach in Hannover at Nils Klug’s push-hands event – next one will be in February 2002. It was refreshing to see that we have in Europe today some individuals who can give “Chinese” demonstrations complete with reference to the nebulous concept of energy and meridians. I guess some of them even believe all that stuff. We also did form demos on the Saturday and I particularly enjoyed doing mirror image long form demo with Roswitha who performed Yang Cheng Fu long form. At times we were close enough to touch at others twenty metres apart, but we finished at the same moment.
A new Executive was elected at the Congress on the 21st July after the Forum. Details at www.TCFE.org, as I don’t want to bore you with them. The next event will be the 2nd European TCC and Internal Arts Championships and Qi Gong Exhibition in Vejle, Denmark, in October next year, which will include fixed, restricted step and moving pushing hands, forms, demos veteran and junion events, and workshops in Qi Gong and Internal Arts. Details will be posted on the web. At the moment Bulgaria is the sole bidder for the next Forum in 2003 and Georgi has a couple of venues in the Balkans in mind. For those interested in such matters, I can recommend the wine, while the feminine population is not the worst looking in Europe; be there or be square.