DLP DVD #2 Review – Forms

[John]

I'm a big fan of forms. When I think about the more complicated systems I studied, that did NOT use forms from years ago, I forget a lot of what I learned. Its just hard to remember, and even looking back on old notes, its hard to remember what I meant by my shorthand at the time. That's where forms come in.Committing a form to memory is a wonderful way to ingrain an encyclopedia of movement. Its easy to remember things because you have an associated anchor movement that links to techniques. The myriad of options each movement contains in AKTS and Serak provide a lifetime worth of study. That's where this DVD comes in. It contains the Warm-ups, Djuru Satu, Langka Dua, Langka Monjet, Pai Yun, and Ling Sing Toi. These are performed by Maha Guru Gartin, Uncle Bill (for Dua), and Guru Ted Garcia (I'm bad with names, so if I made a mistake on them, my apologies). Wow. Having done Serak, it was interesting for me to see similar movements, but even more critically was seeing the movements that aren't contained within Serak. It was also an additional layer of complexity to see the different attitudes the forms have, which can be layered over each other. This is a treasure trove of information that I can't wait to mine. I had to watch the forms twice...once for enjoyment, and once more to imagine it with the blade or stick. Great stuff.The video contains the forms, and doesn't go into much explanation into the movements. This can either be found in the other DVD's, or can be focused on in their specialized parent DVD (The Djuru Satu DVD, Langka Dua DVD, etc). There's just simply too much information to be fit into an hour and 4 minute video. How nice to have the key components of those videos parsed into this easy to view summary. Some of the forms videos are shown in slow motion during a second run, so you can see the actual movements being performed. This is going to require me to sit down with pencil and paper and mark everything down. Lotsa study material here.Said before, and I'll say it again...can't wait to watch the next video. Great stuff. More importantly, can't wait to study and learn this.John

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