What This Graham Star Learned from Training in Martial Arts for a New Akram Khan-Choreographed Show

February 24, 2019

When dancers kick their legs, they typically try to avoid hitting their colleagues. But the performers in the upcoming show Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise, choreographed by Akram Khan, have had to train to do just the opposite.

“It’s not a grand battement. You’re kicking someone’s face. It has to have intention,” says Martha Graham Dance Company star PeiJu Chien-Pott, who plays the role of Xiao Lian, a mother fighting to protect her family.

At the same time, the trick of performing martial arts onstage is, of course, to not actually hurt the other person. To pull this off convincingly, the six lead performers recently spent two weeks in Beijing training with a kung fu master. Chien-Pott shared with Dance Magazine what she got took away from the experience.

Close-up of PeiJu Chien-Pott weilding her sword
PeiJu Chien-Pott rehearsing in Beijing, with director Chen Shi-Zheng and martial arts assistant, Child G, in the background.

An Rong Xu

Becoming One with a Knife

The type of martial arts she studied is called bagua, which was developed in the mountains of China.

“Each of the main characters has a different superpower, different weapons that he or she’s good at,” says Chien-Pott. “My weapon is a long, metal knife. Ideally, I’ll make it look like part of my limb.”

The show’s director Chen Shi-Zheng and master martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping sent her a video from 1983 of a woman moving so fluidly that the knife looks like it weighs no more than a feather. “That’s my reference—that’s my goal.”

What She’s Learned

It turns out that kung fu is ultimately less physical than Chien-Pott assumed.

“It’s about speed and control and eye contact,” she says. “The master told me that eye contact takes 60 percent of the effort, the body movement takes 40 percent. It’s about pulling the audience in with intention and strong focus.”

Chien-Pott realized it’s also about taking pauses between movements to breathe and let the audience digest what just happened. “Learning this technique taught me to be patient; naturally, I always want to keep moving. But then it just looks like messy street fighting.”

The Challenges

The training didn’t come easily: Over the course of two weeks in Beijing, Chien-Pott sprained both an inner thigh muscle and an ankle.

The other unexpected difficulty? Getting her knife back home. “Well before even entering the airport I was called and asked, what is that for?” (She ended up having to wrap it with towels and ship it back to New Jersey).

What’s Next

The bulk of rehearsals for the production don’t start until May (for a July premiere), so in the meantime, Chien-Pott is practicing sequences on her own to increase her arm and wrist strength, and to maintain the martial arts movements in her muscle memory.

But she’s not done learning new skills. Next up? Aerial silks.