Class Description

Creative Cheung Family Kung Fu (Cheung Fu) for Curley After school Program

Every class will be more or less the same throughout the year.

Warm Up:

Students will do a brief Meditation and Chi Gung exercise followed by stretching, stances, and some basic drills. These drills will include kicks from the ground and standing strikes. They will be presented as a work out.

Lion Dance movements:

Students will learn the beginning movements of a basic lion dance. They will also start to sing the beats of the lion dance. The lion dance has aspects that are choreographed but is also largely improvised within a set of traditional movements. For the end of the year performance they will follow a leader head and signals from the drum for cues to follow the basic parts of the dance. But the individual movements of each head will not necessarily be synchronized. Just as wild animals have coordinated movements, but do not necessarily synchronize their movements. Although many modern lion dance teams synchronize movements, I will be teaching from traditional village style lion dance style.

Kung Fu:

Wheels on the Kung Fu Bus song (Students will learn ten animal movements)

Circle Kung Fu dance: Students will learn to move in a circle together doing the ten animal movements into the circle and out. Like lion dance movements will be coordinated but not necessarily synchronized. The circle dance will be to the beat of the drum as well. Students will follow one leader and also take cues from the drummer.

Free style forms:

Students will take turns performing solo Kung Fu sequences that they spontaneously make up using the animal and other movements they have learned or created themselves. Some students will take to this more than others. No child will be forced to perform by themselves.

Memorized synchronized form (for older children)

I will teach a small segment of a form to older children who can memorize and perform it together.

Memorized synchronized basics.

These basic from the warm ups can also be performed to the drum. Students will follow a leader and cues from the drum.

Arts and crafts

As a cool down to each class students will begin to make a cardboard flat faced version of a lion head. They will continue to work on and fix up the same head throughout the year. Or make a new one if theirs somehow is broken or damaged through use. This will be the head that they perform with and take home with them.

Teachers note:

I have made the movements fairly simple so that anyone can pick up these movements upon seeing them once, and then practice them at home. With the exception of the free style forms, students progress not by doing more complicated and fancy movements, but by doing the same simple movements better, smoother, with more power, etc. Students can choose to express themselves more freely in the freestyle movements and so these forms may or may not become more complicated.