In Dance of Death, the introductory idea is that the opponent throws a committed punch to the practitioner's head. The punch is slipped with footwork taking the practitioner in closer to the puncher but along the outside of the punch, a 45 degree step found in many martial arts that use triangle footwork, additionally a parry/block at the elbow is used to keep from being tracked and disturb the puncher's balance at the same time a strike with the ridge of the hand is executed to the groin. Now if we just stop their and play with that idea in sparring, slip to the outside of a punch and strike the opponent in the groin, their is no reason why that is not something a decent fighter could repeatedly pull off. The requirement is the perceptual speed to detect a committed punch, good footwork and head/body movement to slip the punch while closing the gap and the strike to the groin comes easy as it is the natural motion of swinging our arms when we walk.
What else is in Dance of Death, catching a leg near the knee, that can happen, happens all the time during MT matches, so you have this leg captured and your throw an elbow strike with the intention of knocking the opponent down. What does that really require, your on your two legs your opponent is on one leg, if you have drilled your elbows and can get some power out of them, knocking someone on their arse with you elbow strike when you have captured a leg near the knee and are thus close enough to do it, not much of a big deal really. I'm sure someone can play around with that and get good at pulling it off consistently.
So what else is in Dance of Death, OK you have the opponent on their back and you have control of one leg, yes you could do many different options from there but instead you attack the groin and sharply twist the opponents ankle, if they don't roll with it, their goes an ankle but if they roll over with it as intended you have them on their stomach and the idea of the technique and where it gets its name Dance of Death comes in, your going to stomp all over him, aiming for his spine especially the back of his neck and maybe kick his teeth in. Is impractical or illogical to force an enemy from his back to his stomach using his ankle joint for motivation? No, its a fairly straight forward movement, Do you run the risk of being swept or having your leg locked when your holding the opponent by their ankle and standing between their legs? Yes, and someone who has a good understanding of those dangers can show you how to minimize the chances of that happening by controlling the hips and free leg for that instant that your twisting the ankle opponent. So again nothing within that portion of the technique is impossible to do.
Stomping an opponent who is on their stomach or kicking a fallen opponent, these things happen all the time in fights and are certainly not impossible to do.
So the only problem with the entire technique Dance of Death is that Kenpo guys are demonstrating it in a continuous flow against a compliant partner which is giving people the impression that in a fight the Kenpo guy is going to try and work that same sequence in its totality, exactly as shown but only a brain-washed, commercial Kenpoist who learned Kenpo in a McDojo by a teacher who sold him fake confidence as a result of only memorizing choreography without any additional practice to develop application would think that.
Time would have to be spent slipping punches, Time would have to be spent developing footwork, Time would have to be spent catching or capturing the leg, time would have to be spent developing the power in elbow strikes, time would have to be spent developing the perceptual speed to read a hard fast punch. Time would have to be spent working to avoid the counter actions that will occur when your holding a guy by the ankle who is on his back, sweeps, the up-kick, leg locks and some time will have to be spent on the accuracy and power of your stomps so you can better target the fallen opponent's spine and neck, the technique as developed and explained by the founder was nothing more than an introduction to these aspects, the starting point in the ideal phase with the training partner allowing you to get the feel of each part so that you could eventually reach the level where you can pull off these various parts on a resisting opponent and that is going to go hand and hand with so many other techniques, for example their are two other techniques that go along with this one that allow you to change the entry depending on how the opponent guards themselves, if they guard low you end up going high with a choke or to the middle with a hammering combination each of which is never designed to be used from a thinking standpoint but rather ingrained to the degree that while your engaged with an aggressive enemy it spontaneously triggers from being in the right position in an appropriate environment. Your not searching your Rolodex of memory for which of the 154 techniques to use, your just keeping your awareness on the environment including your opponent and the training and hard work you put in does the rest, your basically on auto-pilot even if you are moving in with intent to knock the opponent out.
