Somersault
1 min readThe somersault, also called “flip”, is quite familiar to us. It is a movement in which one touches his head on the ground and jumps up and turns over in the air.
During the Warring States Period two girls good at dancing were sent from the Guangyan State to the Yan State. The King Yanzhao firstly had a layer of ash and cinder four to five inches thick spread on the ground, then the two girls were required to dance on the ash and cinder but there turned out to be no sign indicating the ash and cinder ever trodden upon. Such a record may have exaggerated the fact. According to some sources, the dancing girls back then were in “graceful and supple postures”, which indicated that these girls had command of jujitsu. Such kind of dancing was called “the swallow opera”as it featured such an image reminiscent of the swallow skimming the surface of the water. The swallow opera belongs to the subcategory of the bound in the somersault, so the swallow has a lot of bearings with the somersault. Actually besides the swallow opera, the acts suchas “standing upside down”,”Chong Xia Yan Di”developed at the later phase are als closely linked with the somersault. In the somersault, the headstand is performed before one lands on the ground. The “Chong Xia Yan Di”is quite similar to the somersault only the former includes the act of plunging through the hoops.
