James Lew:
Kung-Fu's Pioneer of
Creative Kata

CRASH! The tall man smashes his chair across a table. His two friends simultaneously begin to fight with unsuspecting customers. Soon, the whole bar erupts into a general melee.
CRASH! The mirror on the wall shatters.
Behind the bar, an Asian bartender stares in disbelief. He shakes his head. What's the use in fighting it? Calmly, he pulls out a notepad and pencil. He begins to take inventory of the damage as it occurs.
CRASH! The last conscious customer slams into a table. The tall man and his two friends stand victorious over everyone in sight. The bartender adds up the damage and hands them the bill. The three men laugh. They throw down a couple one-dollar bills, and head toward the door. Quickly the bartender jumps over the bar and blocks their exit.
"You'd better pay the entire bill." says the bartender.
The tall man approaches him, "Yeah? Or what?"
The other two men surround the bartender, threateningly. Attack is imminent. The bartender flashes two jump kicks in their faces. The kicks startle the men, but do not impress them. The tall man charges in with a punch.

The bartender roundkicks him in the shoulder and... CRASH!... sends him tumbling to the floor. The tall man picks himself up and charges the bartender again. This time more serious. But the bartender ducks under the man's haymaker, lifts him up and CRASH!... drops him on top of a table.

The tall man gets up again. Now he's REALLY mad. He charges the bartender with a blaze of punches. The bartender knocks his arms aside with a powerful crescent kick, then with a hard sidekick, sends the man flying through the door and into the street. "Cut! Cut!" shouts the director. "That's a print."

James Lew takes off his bartender's apron, and walks off the movie set. He has just completed the fight choreography, and acted as the stand-in martial artist, for a scene in ABC's "Movie of the Week," STUNT SEVEN.

Lew is a professional martial arts performer, model and part-time actor. His career has taken him from Las Vegas stage shows with half-clad showgirls, and appearances on TV's Kung-Fu series as a Shaolin monk, to television and film studios as a fight choreographer. He has jump-kicked his way into the living rooms of national television audiences in a Sprite commercial. And once, he even appeared on the In Search Of... series as King Tut.

He is among the select few who have used the martial arts as a springboard into a career in the entertainment industry. And as ironic as it may seem his life as a performer began when as a teenager who hated kata, he began to compete in - what else? - kata. "We never did forms." explains Lew. "In fact, I hated forms. They bored me to death."
"In felt that when I did learn a form that I was being forced to perform a lot of moves that I really didn't like. There were a lot of moves that I thought were stupid, that really didn't make sense. Besides, I didn't think they had much esthetic appeal. They didn't look strong or something. So I prefered to spar. In fact, that's all I ever did." Yet when Lew's instructor, Douglas Wong, opened a kung-fu school, it was James Lew who was sent out to compete in kata. "Wee thought it would be a good promotional thing." recalls Lew. "By going out into tournaments and competing, we could build up a name for the school, and get more students." Instantly, a kata star was born!
Without any previous competitive experience, without any real kata background at all, James Lew made his kata debut at a skill level worthy of a national champion. He was natural. He was dynamic. But most important, he was fresh.

Lew was the first top-caliber kata competitor to include gymnastic moves and extreme stretch techniques in his routines. "And that's where I got in trouble with the judges," says Lew, "because I would put in moves they had never seen before. Back then, the judges wanted a traditional style. So my scores would be mixed. Very high and very low."

Lew was a rebel ahead of his time. He competed in the era just preceding the musical antics of George Chung and Ernie Reyes. In Lew's day, a kata competitor was expected to stick to very basic techniques and use well established forms. Musical accompaniment was considered disrespectful. Yet Lew's performances were so impressive that he helped lay down the foundation for the Golden Era of Kata which the American tournament scene currently enjoys.
James Lew was an early pioneer of the creative kata which today dominates national competitions. "My theory is you should always enjoy anything you do. That's why I began creating my own katas, putting together all of my favorite techniques. That way, I could actually enjoy the form."

Lew believes that this last point was largely responsible for his success as a competitor, and later as a professional performer. "Why make it work? It should always be fun. That kind of attitude helps you look good. But once kata becomes work, just like anything else, you trudge through it. Your moves aren't as good. However, if you actually love to punch in a given way, then you are going to enjoy practising that form because you get to use the punch. Then I'd try to let the fun carry over into the audience. I'd always remember that there are people out there watching. The form should be more of an entertainment thing, for them. Something fun."

Since Lew composed his katas for public display, his first consideration as a competitor was always appearance. "Kata is a very visual thing. And the way you look counts. So I think bodybuilding is a good compliment to kata competition. I mean, just the esthetics of it... someone who is built a little better naturally looks stronger in doing his moves. A good physique is better than having to count on the audience's ability to see your internal strenght."