I've read these posts and am still not sure what all the fuss is about. I know that in the 70's Dan did not want to teach JKD to the general public for 2 basic reasons.
1. He promised Bruce Lee that he would only teach it to small groups like his backyard school.
2. In a seminar there was no control over who was learning it. At the California Martial Art Camps & The Smoky Mountain ones, He wanted Larry Hartsell and me to teach JKD. It was called JKD and not Jun Fan but he wanted no camp certificate that said JKD on it. He wanted Jun Fan on it. The name Jun Fan was first used by Dan after he opened the Kali Academy. The old backyard group became a closed door JKD class there. He then started 4 phases of Jun Fan.After completing these 4 phases a student could be voted into the JKD class. What I learned and always taught was always called JKD. I think the concept idea came about at seminars to show how many of the principles of JKD can be applied to other arts. I remember in the 1970's in the backyard class that Dan had discovered that escrima had the 5 ways of attack. It was called escrima then.
The large group seminars changed how Dan taught certain things. For example, when we learned sumbrada there was no box pattern. Dan came up with that to teach it to large groups. The same is true on how trapping was taught.
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Tim Tackett |