"Doing the Exercise": The In-Body Transmission of Performance Knowledge in a Traditional Martial Art

Abstract

How does one learn to simply the exercise, manipulate the weapon, and the dance with no pretense or artifice, and how are such specific techniques taught in their indigenous settings in Asia? Doing the means that the performer and the exercise or act are one-and this here and actuality of performance is shared by both martial and traditional theatrical arts as practiced in Asia. Both martial and many theatrical artists perform specific strips of codified behavior passed on to them by their master teachers. Or, if they improvise, they do so within such a restricted field of choice and with such a precise vocabulary of techniques that the parameters of the actions are strictly prescribed. The performance in both cases is an act, a doing, a present fact witnessed in the now moment. Performance knowledge is the result of learning the codified strips of behavior and having them ready at hand for use in either structured or improvised performance. While seasoned martial and theatrical artists both possess such inherited strips of behavior, there is a difference in their arts. The martial artist performs his art as an actual and as himself. The performing artist also performs his art as an actual, but appears to be not-himself. The nothimself of the performing artist, however, is not an acting-at-acting (which is often seen in beginning students even in Asia, when they per-