Photograph by Chris Norton, courtesy Missouri Botanical Garden
St. Louis has never hosted a Lantern Festival. And the thick grass at the Missouri Botanical Garden has never dented under the graceful weight of more than 100 t’ai chi practitioners, either. A group of t’ai chi master instructors spent the past year preparing their students to give the demonstration in perfect synchrony. If you missed the spectacle at the festival’s grand opening, you can learn the exact form from the DVD the teachers made, on sale in the Garden gift shop (4344 Shaw, 314-577-5100) for the festival’s duration. Aimed at beginners, the DVD has an original score composed by Jonathan Gathman, and it includes background from local experts—a psychiatrist, a chiropractor, a physical therapy researcher.
