I was recently introduced to Cedar Lake Ballet. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui did a piece for them last year and this video comes from his work before that. It's a collaboration with artist Antony Gormley, composer Szymon Brzoska and the Shaolin temple.
The canon at 0:24 is intensely beautiful.
My relationship with tricking has changed a lot since I started. For most people who do it, it's an extreme sport where the goal is to the most difficult and creative tricks and kicks. Since I've decided to pursue performing, it's become less important to be the best tricker and more important to do good looking tricks. Coming from a gymnastics background, I try to do my corkscrews with locked knees and pointed toes as much as I can. I think it makes it easier for general audiences to appreciate a skill if it is done with form - with the intention of having it look presentable regardless of its difficulty. Most trickers seem to be doing it for other trickers who can objectively identify skills, making classical form less important.
So for a person like Tim Man, a professional stunt actor, you can tell that he wants everything he does to be performed with poise and polish. Instead of landing a combo and walking off looking at the floor, it's a point for him to land in a fighting stance. His flexibility allows him incredible extension for all of his kicks, making it easy to communicate exactly when and where he is kicking.
My favorite part is the bit on the punching bag: training to attack with realism while still looking visually intricate. Extra badass points for letting the hair down.
If you like what you see, you must see him in action in this. A "cover fight" if you will of a scene from the Jackie Chan film Gorgeous. He also makes appearances in the critically panned Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li as well as Tony Jaa's Ong Bak 2.
A lot of tricking loses its martial arts quality in the pursuit of bigger, spinnier tricks. Danny, however, makes everything FIERCE. Amazingly fierce. Every kick looks like it could take your head off, even if it comes after 720° of spin - that's not easy.
His arms are always moving efficiently to speed up his movements, which takes an extremely long time to develop. Nobody tells you where to put your arms most of the time in tricking, so you need to figure it out through experimentation. You can really see it in him.
Danny is currently performing with Jon Chu's Legion of Extraordinary Dancers on the Glee Live tour.
