Kung Fu and Ballet:
A Cross-Cultural History of
Classical Movement Forms

The history of Shaolin Kung Fu stretches back nearly two millennia; before the Indian monk Bodhidharma brought formalized styles of movement to the monks on Songshan mountain, various types of wushu (martial arts) were utilized in Chinese warfare and self-defense. The elements of wushu come from fishing, hunting, and combative folk arts. Bodhidharma was a Buddhist monk, but the foundational series of movements he taught at the Shaolin temple in the 6th century CE derives from the Hindu practice of yoga, which dates back at least four thousand years.

Neither does the history of ballet in Western Europe have a single point of origin. Ballet gradually evolved from popular dances from different regions, influenced by cross-currents of cultural history. When ballet began to crystallize in 15th-16th century Italy and France, it bore the traces of much earlier traditions and of geographic distances: the pas de basque step in ballet, for example, is named for the Basque people, who have lived in the same mountains for at least 7,000 years. Europe itself, in the medieval and early modern periods, was deeply connected to other cultures, particularly through trade and scholarship. The arts of poetry, song, and dance also traveled fluidly, along with philosophy, medicine, and literature. Arabic women’s songs from North Africa turn up as “nonsense” in medieval Spanish poetry, and almost all of Aristotle’s work was preserved in Arabic, unknown to Europeans until its translation.

The project between Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet and the Shaolin monks represents both a blending of very different cultural traditions—Western ballet and Chinese martial arts—and, at the same time, a recognition that these arts of movement are convergent and intertwined. There is a Buddhist story about the moment when Siddhartha begins to move towards enlightenment: he remembers, as a child, intently watching his father start to plow the fields. Focusing on this simple movement created a sense of calm, of timelessness, and of peace. The current collaboration of Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet and the Shaolin monks begins with this kind of understanding, of movement in the moment. Together they are drawing on the deep histories of both traditions to build a uniquely beautiful work of art.