It appears that Michael Garofalo has lost his domain name! His website is such a great resource–I hope he’ll get it back up. I was counting on it for the traditional names for Yang sword (and for a lot of other things as well). [False alarm: Cloud Hands is fine. Whew!]

I left off 56-sword at 1:30 in the excellent demo by Fan Xue Ping. She was in xu bu liao. What follows is: She slashes backhanded to the right, then steps in with the right foot and does Phoenix Spreads Wings (above). Repeat Xu Bu Liao.

Next, she steps back with the left foot and stabs downward to the left and circles the sword up, so the tip does a figure-8. She has shifted all her weight to the left and finishes this move stabbing down (xia ci) in xu bu (right empty stance–above).

The next move, repeated twice, is also unfamiliar. She steps right, blocking down with both hands on the hilt, as shown above (1:50), then steps left into what looks to me like zuo gong bu lan, except the sword is held lower. The first step is palm-down, the second is palm up. This brings us to 2:00 (below).

The form is a little more than five and a half minutes long. I’ll try to learn the whole sequence this winter.