Is Learning a Martial Art like Learning a Language?

Last night my Ghanaian Dance group got an infusion of new dancers at the same time as two master drummers returned to the group. The new dancers were from Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Brazil. They are attending an interpreters educational immersion school here in Boulder. The group is spectacularly fun, energetic, positive, and deep.

It got me thinking, I am a kind of dance-movement interpreter. Learning a new culture’s movement system, whether we dub it dance or martial art, is like learning a...