This show, featuring the Shaolin Legend Group, toured the Netherlands from march 31 untill april 11th 2009. The show was called "heroes of martial arts". According to the flyer the Shaolin Temple is considered the origin of Chinese Martial arts. This is not completely correct although the Shaolin Temple did play a major role in the developement of chinese martial arts as we know today.The show was said to have been inspired by traditional gongfu styles and famous martial arts movie stars, namely Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li. The tradional part consisted of a shaolin routine we know from other "shaolin" shows. This included Taiji, Weapons, Animal routines and Qigong (needle through glass, breaking iron bars on the head etc.)
Shaolin Wheel of Life may be the best shaolin show ever to have toured the world. Anything that followed was a variation on the the same theme done by martial artists posing as shaolin monks. Though some of these martial artsist may have a connection with the Temple, whether they are monks or not, is still questionable. But this is not about real and/or fake monks. The martial artists in this show are not monks. The Shaolin Legend Group is a group of highly skilled, Zhengzhou based, performers some of which have worked with Jackie Chan.
What makes this show different from all the other shaolin shows?
For starters, the performers did not shave their heads to look like monks. Only the first part of the show, the taiji part, they donned shaolin monk atire. The rest of the show the were wearing wushu uniforms and "streeth clothing". There were performances in which we could recognize Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and Jet Li. Jackie Chan is famous for his drunken style and this was beautifully done by Zhao Fei, a very talented young man whose specialties are drunken sword and praying mantis. He presumably also played a major role in the show's choreography.
Next was the Bruce Lee look-a-like, the black pants, the muscles and the nunchaku's and the Bruce Lee-yell, Bruce all over. Then there was Wong Fei Hung. A little harder to recognize weren't it for the movie intro played on a big screen, perhaps the only part, together with the drum and liondance that was not so good about this show. But this is easily forgotten watching the rest of the performance.
High speed weapons routines, acrobatics, animal forms and the absolute icing on the cake was the finale!
Based on The Matrix, the performers dressed in long black coats, wearing dark sunglasses made us re-live the Matrix hype.
This show clearly demonstrated that one doesn't need to dress and pose like shaolinmonks to entertain an audience. Ditch the robes and what do we get? A really spectecular martials arts performance done by outstanding atheletes who don't need shaolin robes to shine!
Watch the videos, taken from a local tv station, giving you an impression of the show. The drunken style part in the second video is done by the before mentioned Zhao Fei, who like two other members of the group, is a teacher at a gongfu school in Zhengzhou, that is when the group is not on tour.
