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This is so cute!  I ran across this video while searching for school stuff - I should ask master Li who the girl is.  She must be a very good student - it's hard to find kids who actually "listen" at that age - and I particularly love the way she hits the fist and leg so seriously :-)

Update: I asked Master Li - this is his daughter, taking a Taiji class for the first time!

Our school had a demonstration last week, which unfortunately I could not attend.  Master Li prepared this video to show how attendees should coordinate with music and also how to end the demo, which is about a third into the Chen style old form first road:

The video is not of great quality since it's filming by a viewer at a competition, but the performance is rather nice.  42-step Taiji is the standard competition form, and has a combination of postures from various styles.  Mostly Yang, but certainly Chen and Sun (I do not know anything about the other styles, so I can't tell).  This is the routine that professor Li De Yin co-created.  I started this routine when I lived in Pennsylvania, but I had to move before I finished it.  Hopefully some day I will learn it again!

One of the good things about learning the Chen style for me is that I can go back and think more about how I'm doing the movements in Yang style.  So for example, my 24-step movements are now rounder and more curvy.  This is something that a couple of teachers told me at different points in time, and now I'm experiencing it first hand.  Here is another demonstration of the 24-step by Su Renfeng - you can see how round and smooth the movements are:

Master Jesse Tsao teaches Taiji in San Diego and and has studied for a long time with professor Li De Yin.  One of his great contributions to the education of Taiji is a comprehensive set of videos (available on DVD as well as VHS) on various related topics, from different forms of Qigong to various styles of Taiji.  Here is a sample of his 24-step video:



I have particularly enjoyed his silk reeling and a few other Qigong DVDs.  He is a really lovable instructor.  You can find the complete list of DVDs on his web site, TaiChiHealthways.com.

32-step is an interesting routine.  It's much more complex compared to the 24-step routine, but in terms of combining styles it's still very Yang centric.  I liked the routine when I learned it, specially since it's more demanding and there are more curves built into it (I particularly loved the beginning of the form).  However, now that I think back, I think it would have been just as effective if I had started 42-step right after 24.  I don't think 32-step adds much value for somebody who wants to learn the competition form anyway.  Nevertheless, I found this nice demonstration of the form which I'm adding here as a reference:

Very nice Chen style demonstration by master  Chen Zheng Lei.  Sounds to me like a flavor of the old frame routine one.  I see a lot of common elements and sequences with the routine I know as the old frame routine one.  I have learned to accept that with old routines there is no "one" right form.  There are many verities, evolved and changed over time as each master taught his or her students...

  
Here is the direct link in case the video does not show up.

This is a great video demonstrating the simplified Yang short form - the 24-step Taiji. I will write more about the significance of the 24-step routine in a separate post:



Here's the direct link in case the video does not show properly.