The Professor: Tai Chi's Journey West

The 1960s were a time of experimentation and exploration in America. So it wasn't particularly unusual for a 63-year-old Tai Chi master from Taiwan to move his family during that anything-goes decade to Manhattan, where he taught the form to martial arts students, young radicals, and hippies. Filmmaker Barry Strugatz's The Professor: Tai Chi's Journey West tells the story of that master, Cheng Man-Ching (1902-1975), who in his Canal Street studio distilled over 100 form positions down to 37 essentials and shared them with devotees. The documentary features abundant archival footage of Cheng teaching and demonstrating how to control the flow of energy, with the short and slight instructor almost magically pushing much larger opponents up and back several feet by turning back their own energy. Many of the students seen in those almost 50-year-old images are interviewed, speaking with awe of and fondness for Cheng, who withstood criticism from other martial arts teachers for sharing Tai Chi's secrets with Westerners. Cheng also seems to have broken decorum by becoming a personal and caring presence in the lives of his students (some of Cheng's family members stage a warm reunion with students here). Extras include Cheng performing short-form Tai Chi, and an interview with Harvard Medical School's Peter M. Wayne. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)