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Shaolin WarriorsIn his hotel in the West End of Brisbane stands Liu Chen, conducting interviews on the courtesy phone. He's the artistic Director and choreographer for the Chinese Shaolin Warriors, who are currently on tour around the country. "Yeah, sure," he says easily when I ask whether the tour is going well. "We've been in Cairns and Towoomba and the Gold Coast and here in Brisbane, and everything's been sold out. Everything goes well - we'll just keep performing." As they did some two years ago when the Shaolin Warriors last toured Australia, showing audiences their skill and agility in Kung Fu. But the Shaolin Warriors are not just a martial arts 'fight-fest; the twenty four monks hail from the original Shaolin monastery in Henan in China, and their training is perhaps more about a state of mind than it is about fighting prowess. "I take rehearsal for - I think - three years, and every year I think of something new; I change something or find a new version," admits Liu Chen. "This time I think something new comes from the rehearsal: they take meditation before rehearsal and it's easy for them to come into the spirit of the rehearsal and performance." He suggests he can see a real change in the monks approach to their performance in that they are enjoying it more. The Shaolin Warriors are very highly trained through time-honoured methods, but what Liu Chen describes is the dedication required by by elite performers, such as athletes. Even so, the monks have realised that to come up with a touring show attractive to the ticket buying public they need to polish the product a bit... "They like to come into training with pop music; they like the Chinese pop songs, and we also play all different sounds of music, like trance and drum & bass... make them exciting..." suggests Liu Chen. Such levity in the life of these ascetic monks has come about through their exposure to Western society and customs, but there's something almost surreal about a Chinese explaining it to me in such a way. "They modernise," he says with a laugh. "Come to the show, you can see we've got younger monks in the demonstrations. Lately it's become a lot more fun for the audience - kids fight, and drunken boxing... we have a little monk who tries to learn that and he drinks the wine in drunken boxing and tries to fight. It's funny," he declares. "Before that I think we toured as if the martial art of Shaolin fighting was a secret or something," he says, thinking of their earlier tours. "Too serious. I think we should be closer to the people." Liu Chen has a university degree majoring in modern dance so he helps choreograph the routines. Are there similarities between the art forms, I ask? "Yeah sure," he agrees. "You know, it's all about the body and how to connect the body to the spirit and the mind. "I think the meditation - as some way to get power, to get strength - is very important, because the day to day training is very boring. Discipline and meditation is very important to them."
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