Combination of Styles
Many styles that are the result of combining different methods are often termed "eclectic" and often are lacking a core, instead relying upon the continual addition of new strategies, tactics, and techniques. The Liu Seong system although hybridized is not at all "eclectic", and the basic movements are also the advanced. Understandings and applications change, but the essential system does not. This allows for a much greater depth in the development of skill owing to the continual refinement of a base that does not inherently change, but instead becomes more advanced.
There are various view points espoused by martial artists about the nature of systems and their development. One view is that although a style may be a hybrid or combination, eventually it develops its own identity and is no longer considered to be 'mixed'. Another view is that all martial arts are indeed hybrids and are the result of a continual process of synthesis and refinement, and any given art in a generational span is, in fact, a 'phase' of its development.
Another extremely valid point of view upon differing martial styles is they are more accurately identified as cultural/social representations. Karate is Okinawan or Japanese, gungfu is Chinese, and so on. Each culture tends to focus on a different approach to the fighting arts, according to their mores.
In one sense, the 'real' difference in arts, beyond cultural distinctions, lies in the strategies and tactics employed.
The Liu Seong system is culturally derived from the arts of China and Indonesia, and accordingly has tactical elements of both. The adopted cultural aspects, primarily school etiquette, may vary between Chinese and Indonesian terminology and practices, and may even include elements of both.
There is an axiom that states that for a system to be valid it must be based upon a greater system. Beyond the consideration of historical and cultural elements, what defines the Liu Seong system is a core of operation that is firmly rooted in the principles of physics, psychology and anatomy. This orientation is what allows the art to weave together two disparate cultural elements and blend differing strategies together into one whole, and in the end, define itself. It is a true synthesis.
Read more about this topic: Liu Seong Kuntao
Famous quotes containing the words combination of, combination and/or styles:
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—Richard Louv (20th century)
“So of the three methods: reason, sense, or a knowing combination of both, the last seems the least like a winner, the second problematic; only the first has some slim chance of succeeding through sheer perversity, which is possibly the only way to succeed at all.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The gothic is singular in this; one seems easily at home in the renaissance; one is not too strange in the Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all these styles seem modern when we come close to them; but the gothic gets away.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)