Kung Fu Panda Fighting Dance

[Tom Donahou]

Mei Mei is a resident of Panda Village and a passionate ribbon dancer. She first appears in Kung Fu Panda 3, where she meets and flirts with Po, and later enlists under his instruction in learning kung fu. Po helps her to utilize her dancing skills into her fighting style, handing her a pair of nunchucks to use alongside her ribbon stick. She is also featured as a supporting character in the Amazon Prime series Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny.[6]

Mei Mei was first shown presenting herself in a ribbon-dancing performance as Po, Li, Mr. Ping, and several panda villagers watched. While Po was dumbfounded, Mei Mei tried to impress him and flirted with him, much to his unease. She proceeded to wrap him in her ribbons and move him to perform actions that made it look like Po was trying to woo her. Additionally, Mei Mei insisted on showing him how to dance, despite his reluctance, and ended the performance by holding him up in the air wrapped in ribbons, to which the crowd cheered.

Later, as the threat of Kai came closer to the Panda Village, Po decided to teach the pandas how to fight using their known talents. He taught Mei Mei how to use nunchucks, helping her to apply her ribbon-dancing to learning combat. She was clumsy with the weapon at first, as she had hit Grandma Panda with the nunchucks. But, she was soon able to use it to great effect, and quickly defeated one of Kai's jade zombies.

When Po sent himself and Kai to the Spirit Realm, she and the others in the Panda Village gathered to help Po as he was battling Kai. She used her chi with the others, acknowledging herself as "a nunchuck chick", and helped Po to defeat Kai.

After Kai's defeat and Po's return to the mortal realm, Mei Mei was shown practicing kung fu at the Jade Palace with the other pandas, and was briefly shown to be flirtatiously impressed with a different male panda.

Mei Mei enjoys ribbon-dancing and performing, and is fun, easygoing, and hyperactive, as well as being rather "diva-like". She is also mildly narcissistic and controlling, willing to use her ribbons like puppet-strings on someone and playfully act like they're lavishing her with attention. She also tends to be very forward and flirtatious, particularly around Po. She also flirted with another male panda at the end of the film.

Mei Mei has been described as the best ribbon-dancer in the Panda Village. Taking advantage and this skill, Po helped her to apply her ribbon-dancing to fighting by giving her nunchucks, and Mei Mei mastered the weapon in a relatively short period of time, even using it effectively against the jade zombies when they attacked the village. Using her ribbons to manipulate her enemies' movements, she captures them, and then strikes them using her nunchucks. She later described herself as being "a nunchuck chick."

Mei Mei also took part in defeating Kai, using her chi power with the other panda villagers and helping Po when he was in the Spirit Realm.[3] She is shown to continue learning chi along with the other pandas at the end of Kung Fu Panda 3

Upon first meeting Po while she was performing, Mei Mei immediately "made eyes" with him, while Po seemed to feel incredibly nervous and awkward at receiving such attention. However, she acted as if Po was romantically interested in her, from saying flattering things about herself and pretending Po was saying them, to wrapping him in her ribbons and moving him like a puppet, making him give her flowers and kiss her paw.

Despite Po being very hesitant, Mei Mei continued to engage with him, excitedly insisting to show him how to dance when he claimed he couldn't, and "helping" him when he failed miserably by picking him back up and wrapping him in ribbons. At some point in the film, the two of them incidentally got tied up together, with Mei Mei sarcastically commenting towards Po being "subtle", despite it being an accident.

Later, Po taught her how to use nunchucks, helping her to make use of her ribbon-dancing to learn this new skill in order to fight off the jade zombies. Proving capable of doing so, she and the others in the Panda Village helped Po when he was fighting Kai, and she acknowledged how Po had helped her to discover that she was "a nunchuck chick". She also helped Po to defeat Kai by using her chi.

Mei Mei's outfit was designed to resemble that of a bride's,[8] consisting of a decorative red robe with purple lining, and a pink dress worn underneath. She also wears a blue sash around her waist that has two strings of beads attached with tassels. She also occasionally carries a lavender fan with a butterfly design on it.[3]

In some images, Mei Mei's appearance has differed from her look in the film, where her fan instead features a dragon design, and her robes have different patterns. Mei Mei has also been shown wearing headdresses: one being a golden flower-shaped headdress, and the other with a black-colored midsection.[8]

So, you've found yourself in an altercation. You're facing down your opponent, ready to kick some ass, when you notice something weird: they're moving about in subtle dancing motions as they wait for you to attack. You assume them to be styling on you and you start swinging at them with your most precise hits, but none of them connect while your opponent continues to sway gracefully. You step back for a moment to predict where they're going to go next and what they're going to do. You aim straight for them as they start spinning and then BAM!

While this might seem strange, it's hardly all that far-fetched. Being a good dancer requires flexibility, coordination, balance, reflexes, and sometimes strength and speed, all things that go a long way in a fight as well. Plus, it just looks cool. Expect more dramatic characters to hang a lampshade on the relationship between dance and combat.

There are several ways to go about this:

• The character is a practitioner of the martial art known as Capoeira or something related/similar, which combines elaborate defensive movements with well-timed attacks. This is the route usually gone down by a Fighting Game character, e.g. Elena, Bob Wilson, Eddie and Christie, etc.
• The character is a superbly-skilled dancer and just happens to know how to fight as well, fusing the two, e.g. Duck King, Dee Jay, etc. This is arguably the most common example of this trope.
• The character either practices Drunken Boxing or is just really drunk.
• The character is just plain nuts.

Dance Battlers are often unarmed. Adding a weapon will make them even more deadly because these kinds of fighters tend to favor knives or small arms that can be twirled with gymnastic flair. If they can Spin to Deflect Stuff, all the better. Either way, a Dance Battler is an annoying opponent, since it's hard to tell what's an attack and what's just a fancy step.

A reasonable skill to teach someone in the Wax On, Wax Off method. Gives a whole new meaning to "Dance Sensation". If the dancer is popular and/or given special treatment for their talents, they're Dancing Royalty. If female, the Dance Battler is likely to be a Lady of War because of their graceful movements in battle. If the Dance Battler can Summon Backup Dancers, be very worried. This trope often goes hand-in-hand with Confusion Fu.

Compare She-Fu, which can be combined with the Dance Battler style. Compare & contrast Musical Assassin, Magic Dance, and Graceful in Their Element. See also Let's Dance, which is usually not meant literally, but can be.

Not to be confused with Dance-Off, when people duel just by dancing without any combat, or Fight Dancing where somebody uses martial skills to stand in for dance moves dance for purely non-combat purposes.

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: An Archie comic had him and Reggie driven to laughing fits over Veronica's "sissy" male ballet dancer friend - until he single-handedly subdues a gang of tough guys with his moves.
• Batman
• Capoeira is among the many fighting styles Batman has mastered.
• Orpheus's fighting style is a combination of his background in dance with his martial arts training.
• Nightwing mixes dancing into his fights on occasions, like when he was fighting a group of musicians and incorporated break-dancing into their take-down.
• Cloak and Dagger: Dagger has a fighting style that heavily incorporates her ballerina training.
• Deadpool: Deadpool has managed to beat the Taskmaster by virtue of being type four -just plain nuts. Since his brain is constantly shifting due to cancer and superhealing, he never does any form of combat the same way twice, and will often use whatever form randomly pops in his head, including dance battling.
• The Defenders: Ren Kimura from the Fearless Defenders uses her dance skills in conjunction with her ability to create razor-sharp ribbons from her hands.
• Freaks' Squeele: Xiong Mao from the French comic uses a martial arts style called Flamendo. It is described as "a martial arts style with all the trappings of dance".
• Jon Sable, Freelance: Subverted in one issue. John and a male ballet dancer friend are confronted by a gang, and Jon is bracing himself for a fight when his friend spots the boombox one of them is carrying and puts on a show combining ballet and breakdancing moves. The gang is so impressed they let them pass.
• Justice League of America: Vibe, a member of the Justice League during its Detroit phase, used breakdancing moves as part of his fighting style.
• The Outsiders: Bolshoi of The People's Heroes used ballet as the basis for his martial art. He later adds to this with actual prowess in the martial arts. He still gets bits chopped off him. Thank goodness for modern reattachment surgery.
• The Question: Marco from The Question Quarterly.
• Runaways: When the Runaways have an adventure in 1910s New York, one of the heroes they meet is Lillie "The Spieler" McGurty, who can fly to the rhythm of music. One of her first scenes has her fighting a gang of strikebreakers and she dances on their heads.
• Superman: Intrepid Reporter Lois Lane once used dance battling while impersonating a ballet dancer.
• Transformers: Shattered Glass: Abominus is a Cultured Badass whose fighting style is based on interpretive dance.
• The Wicked + The Divine: Dionysus (the dancefloor that walks like a man) weaponizes his Hive Mind ravers to storm Valhalla, all of them lit with an inner glow from his magic and unable to be hurt as long as he protected them. He also had glowstick nunchaku.
• Wonder Woman Vol. 1: Priscilla Rich, the first Cheetah, was a skilled dancer, and this translated into remarkable agility in combat.

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