Bio-aesthetics

I have found a completely different area of the mountain that has nothing to do with Martial Arts as I had understood that term. Actually, I found more Fine Arts in Tai Chi than I had imagined. Perhaps this is just Bio-Aesthetics, the way that high level behavior that is potentially beneficial to the organism is perceived as pleasing or beautiful because there is a biological imperative to it. Maybe…

The deep Artistic Engagement with Tai Chi is a varied and personal thing. I remember having endless conversations with one friend over what is art and what is not. I’m not going there I promise you but I am thinking about what characteristics might transform movement into this danse macabre. Oh oh, I feel a list coming on.

• Listening, performing and composing with movement
• Showing aesthetic resonance through energy and facial expressions
• Being intensely absorbed for extended periods of time
• Revealing a quality of concentration not apparent elsewhere
• Beginning to discover, explore, give expression to and communicate the inner world
• Making significant physical responses - movements and gestures which hitherto have not been seen, or have not previously been made independently
• Listening to the effects of moving or standing still
• Exploring a hypothesis - If I move this way I feel unbalance so if this then…??
• Specific spatial concepts such as high, low, fast, slow, variation; the concepts of linkage – thought with movement, feeling with quality of movement
• Which part of my body will I move? Where will I move? How will I move?
• Self reflection - How did I feel about what I just invented? What could I have done differently? What did it remind me of? Why do I suck so bad?
• Memory skills - Can I remember what I discovered last time? Do I want to use it again?
• Where am I in the Slow Set??
• Spatial orientation – Where am I?

Maybe Artistic expression is always related to Bio-Aesthetics. We always talk about Naturalness. It is an ideal to have Natural Movement and when you see it you understand that the efficiency, functionality, the beauty and the effortless quality of movement are an emergent property of Natural Movement. You have to remember though, there are other kinds of natural movement such as awkwardness, self-consciousness, flinching, getting startled, being fearful and tentative in your movement that are less desirable. So we are clearly talking about a Sub-set of Natural Movement and that is Relaxed Natural Movement. Even animals have to learn to transform awkwardness into ability, look at tiger cubs or fauns playing. They take clumsy behavior and transform it into agile movement. Yes, it seems that play and pretend hunting and pretend fighting are the principle ways of learning this elsewhere in the Natural World. Oh yeah. This is juicy stuff here, we are hunter gatherers drawn to the distant horizon by pattern and meaning guided by this compass called Bio-Aesthetics.