A question came my way a few days ago about why karate people do forms (kata). There are many reasons and it's been written about in depth in an array of books on the martial arts. I address the subject in my books but it bears some discussion here.
I look at forms as being our version of "tribal knowledge". You are familiar with the concept even if you don't recognize the term. Talk to a car insurance salesperson, and they go into this thing about your car being a "symbol 7" or whatever. A computer tech speaks a language you don't understand. But when they communicate with each other they understand one another because they have a common ground of knowledge and a language to go with it. We do the same thing with "kenpo-speak."
Steve White said in a business seminar we had for kenpo school owners that we don't use kenpo-speak with new people in the first year of training. They need some time to get a handle on the terminology, definitions, technique code names, etc. If you think about it, it's a good point. You may think you're just impressing the heck out of the new person with your knowledge when they may be thinking, "I'll never remember this stuff."
My point is that we have our "tribal knowledge" in many ways and that the forms are just one. Many cultures used folk dance to tell a story. Watch the Filipinos, the Thais, and the Hawaiians. The hula (which, by the way, was originally done by and for men) tells a story with the hand motions. The Filipino stick dance was a way for villagers to conceal the footwork of the knife fighting techniques of their village from the Spanish conquerors.
Of course, story-telling was also used, but I'm referring to the physical methods of information preservation. Kata were a way to choreograph the information into a "readable" format that could be passed along to the next generation. They were called a "dance of death". This is a big reason to insure they are taught and practiced correctly. Otherwise, it's a just a big game of "Telephone", where the message gets garbled more with every repetition. If we are the Kenpo tribe, we need to preserve these things. If not, all we have is dance or gymnastics, although we'll get to keep the benefits of cardio-vascular fitness, flexibility, timing, and the challenge of remembering all the steps in order. But that's not really the heart of it, is it?
