Huayi Festival Rehearsals

Been caught up with rehearsals for the upcoming performance for a Huayi Festival item this Saturday. Its a retelling of the chinese classic "Liang Zhu" (Butterfly lovers) via a fusion of different art forms.

There is a variety of dance and music styles, songs performances (local acapella grp Juz-B) and even an amazing live Beat-box segment that got all of us watching open-jawed.

KUEN Wushu performers are primarily involved in a fusion of dance and Wushu choreography segment that has the guys donning menacing looking black Victorian-like costumes. It features us Men-In-Black preventing the female lead (Zhu Yingtai, played by the lovely Yan Yan *smitten*) from escaping by wielding poles and swords and sabres. Costume looks uber-cool, much better than I expected when I first got the concept art in my mail.

I've got a video of the rehearsal that I'll put up once i get around to editing it. Meanwhile, here's a look at the costume.

Eduplus Wushu enrichment at Taonan school

This is the 2nd year we've been providing our Wushu enrichment programmes for Eduplus' Chinese language camps, and this year's venue was at Taonan School. Every year, students from different schools come together during the school holidays for a short Chinese language camp and our KUEN Wushu trainers will be tasked to involve them with a short introductory Wushu workout as part of their physical programme.

KUEN Wushu 2008 Photo Shoot

Just had our first photo shoot of 2008 last night. I'll post some nice shots of the shoot here once I get my hands on the photos, post-processed of course.

*Edit (01/03/08): Ok here you go. I've only got time to watermark a few to put here. There are lots more, 11gig of raw photos...Gulp.

KUEN Trainers staring down the small but notoriously fierce Kaiting Laoshi.


Wa Sai! Zhipeng laoshi's flying!


Wang Liang Laoshi flaunting his flexibility... :p

The whole thing was a logistical nightmare and frankly speaking, I'm amazed we made it through without too many hiccups. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we've got all the shots we wanted. Hey, its not everyday you get to do a shoot in a professional studio right? I think the students and performers enjoyed themselves. Well, they got to doll themselves up and look pretty in Wushu poses, - every Narcissistic Wushu person's wet dream. Heh...
Pardon the long wait if you guys are reading this, but I kinda expected it'll be delayed, from past photo shoot experiences. I think it started around 7pm and ended deep into the night. Poor me reached home around 2am and had to wake up at 6.30am to conduct an early morning programme at Gan Eng Seng Primary.

Yawn.......... Ca...n't....t.y...p...e.....neeee...d....s...l...e.e..p... ZZ.z.z.z.z...z.z..z.zzz

KUEN Wushu and Yew Tee Primary @ Chingay 2008

Hey everyone, the photos are out!!! Take a look at these...


All dressed up and ready. Wait... is that lipstick?!? Ahhh!!!


Opening segment - Right centre, in front of the soon-to-be tossed Yusheng.


CHARGE!!! "FOR SPAAAAARTAAAAA!!!!"


"Haaaaiiii-Yak!!!" Look at our flying kick!


Victory!!! Celebration time!



A big Thank You to the students, parents and teachers from Yew Tee Primary school for their unwavering support. Thank you to those who specially took time off to train and perform even on such short notice. We couldn't have done it without any of you.

We had such fun. Now that its over.... depressed liao... Aww...

I know. Let's do it again in 2009!!! Yeah!

Training for Chingay 2008

Tired. Its 2am in the morning and I'm online writing this... Yawn. I really ought to be sleeping...

Was alerted to an impromptu performance a couple of days ago and had to press the emergency ACTIVATE button to get together a team of performers for a Chingay item.

Mad rush to get everyone together and to coordinate the moves but we did it. I've been running through some ideas for this performance's choreography and tonight was the night it all came to fruition. Kinda...heh. We just need a little more practice and we'll be perfect.

Of course we couldn't have done it without the cooperation and effort everyone has given to this project. Especially the guys doing the Double Sabre segment, most had to train from scratch, and yet the end result is something that I had envisioned it to be - a perfect union of double sabres and straight swords. Looks good to me. Gotta video it and put it online if got the chance.

Special shout out to:
> Ivan and Evelyn. Thanks for taking up the challenge and putting in so much effort.
> Marcus and Yongchao. Thanks man... can you believe its been years since you've picked up a shuang dao? Heh...
> Everyone else who has put in time and sweat to make it unforgettable. I am sure we will all look back tomorrow and smile at the memories we are making today.

To the rest of you reading this, catch us at Chingay 2008 this Friday and Saturday night!

KUEN WUSHU ROXXX!!!!

First time aerials at KUEN Wushu

Last Sunday's training (06/01/2008) was an exciting one for 2 of our young ones at KUEN Wushu.
Congratulations to Annabelle and Weixuan for getting that Cekongfan!



* Original video of their Cekongfan no longer available. The video server went Kaput. : (

2008 - A brand new year awaits...

New year greetings for 2008!

Lol... I know its a little belated, it is after all the 7th of Jan, but like they say, better late than never. : )

Just a little shout out to everyone from KUEN Wushu for their support this past year. Thank you everyone for your help and thanks again to all the trainers, members and parents for making KUEN such a great place to call our own. (90-degree bow...)

Looking back at 2007, there were numerous major events and milestones for KUEN. - First off, we said goodbye to our beloved home of 3 years at Geylang Bahru and relocated to our present training facility.
- Then there was the god-send Chen Zhipeng laoshi joining the ranks of our KUEN trainers.
- Then we got busy with the schools' SEP programmes, hitting a record number of close to 9000 student participants in our KUEN Wushu programmes.
- Return to Poiching school and Fuhua and seeing familiar faces.
- Training camps and China excursion at the year end.

All in all, I say we did pretty good for one year dont'cha think?

Yeah.

Here's to a brand new year in 2008!

Wushu Performance! Y Proms@CLAP!

The performance on Saturday night at Chinatown Kreta Ayer Square was an absolute HIT with the crowd!

Great job to all who participated! A BIG THANK YOU! goes to Kaiting laoshi and Zhipeng laoshi in charge of choreographing and preparation for this event. The meticulous effort put into planning and preparation is evident, clearly seen and translated extremely well onstage into 10 minutes of pure entertainment for the spectators young and old.

Gotta thank the parents of the young performers for their support in sending the children down for practices and rehearsals. I'm sure they must be proud to see the end result. I know I am. :)

Photos photos...

Uh-oh... when will I clear this backlog of photos to post online.

Do wait patiently, I'll get to it soon.... I hope. :p

KUEN Wushu Holiday Training Camp Nov 2007

Its over.

5 days of hell-on-earth for the trainers...

Children... so many noisy children... Arghhh!

But it wasn't nearly as bad for me as it was for the rest of the trainers... This time I unofficially volunteered myself to be in-charge of entertainment and games, and carefully side-stepped all the heavy responsibilities of being a trainer-in-charge.

I think the kids enjoyed themselves. *pats self on back* Especially on the last night's BBQ where they had free-flow marshmallows. MmmmMmmm.........

This year's group was slightly bigger, with participants from Kranji Pri, Yew Tee Pri, Zhonghua Pri, Yew Tee CC, Jurong Spring CC, KUEN Kids, etc...

I saw some definite potentials in the young ones and some made astonishing improvements over the week. You can almost see them get better with each training session.

Great job KUEN trainers! Cheers to Kaiting laoshi, Wang Liang Laoshi, Zhipeng Laoshi, Zhicheng Laoshi and the rest of the trainers!

I'll definitely post photos of the camp as soon as I get my hands on them.

SSC SEP Showcase at Orchid Country Club

Updates:

SSC SEP Sports Showcase for year 2008 Sports Education Programmes. This year they decided to hold it at Orchid Country Club. Did a recce this morning of the grounds at OCC, not very impressed. :( No demo areas, lots of restrictions, low ceiling height = No high high banners liao...sigh

Anyway, the trainers spent the whole of today preparing for their turn tomorrow to put up our own Pasam Malam...heh. Well, at least they should be more experienced this time round, since we've been doing SEP programmes since its pilot phase in year 2006.

Some interesting figures we amassed for this round of marketing.

Did you know?
- the combined total no. of students taught by KUEN trainers in the year 2007 is a whopping 8759 !!!
- that's an average of 1459.83333 students taught by each KUEN trainer a year!
- we have brought our KUEN Wushu programmes to more than 25 schools since year 2006
- there are currently more than 800 photographs (of student programmes) in our photo archive.
- we spent an average of 4.5 hrs a week on weekly debriefs and training meetings