Taolu (forms) are for a different purpose than Sanda.
Sanda and other forms of "free sparring" are centered on the notion that both opponents are free to move around and fight each other using kicking, punching, and blocks, and occasionally also sweeps, throws, and some standing holds.
Forms are encapsulations of self-defense techniques, or they were originally.
So what are self-defense techniques? They're what to do when someone gets you in a bear hug. Or someone in a bar grabs your lapel with one hand and raises his other hand to punch you in the face. Or someone is threatening you with a knife in his hand. These are typical scenarios that have occurred for thousands of years and are still happening today.
The techniques in forms are for these particular self-defense situations, for the most part. (Other forms do exist for other purposes, but self-defense is the primary purpose.)
Contemporary wushu has forms which derive from traditional kung-fu forms. Traditional kung-fu forms are generally all about self-defense. However, contemporary wushu has taken most of the self-defense meaning out of the forms in an attempt to emphasize the athletic components of the art. Though it still contains techniques that are taken directly from traditional kung-fu, they're usually taken out of order and treated individually, whereas those techniques may have occurred in the traditional form along with other techniques in a very specific order for a specific self-defense purpose. Individually, the techniques may not mean much, but in the context of 3 or 4 other techniques that come before or after them, they have self-defense applications. By taking a single technique out of here and putting in there, it loses that original self-defense context.
Now, what is free sparring and how does it differ from self-defense techniques?
The answer is that free sparring is "free". The two people are free to move around. They're not holding onto one another. There's no grappling. It's composed of punches, kicks, and blocks. Some rules (particularly those under Sanda's rule set) allow for sweeps and throws as well, but nothing like grappling found in Brazilian Jiujitsu, for example. Even in Sanda, people are mostly free to move around.
The goals, rules, and contexts of both self-defense and free sparring are different, and so their expression is going to look different as well.
People look the way they do in Sanda, because that's what you expect people to do while under Sanda's rules. It won't look like forms. It's going to look like kickboxing for the most part.
The same is true of Karate, Taekwondo, and other forms-based martial arts. The forms will generally look very different from the sparring.
People do attempt to make their sparring look more like their forms, because they simply misunderstand what I've just explained. They think sparring and forms are both for fighting, and so they should look the same. They really just don't know what their forms are for. They don't know how to interpret them, and their teachers haven't told them the self-defense meaning. To most people, forms are just punches, kicks, and blocks. But that's generally wrong (with some exceptions like two-man sets). And so if everything in the form is punching, kicking, and blocking, then why wouldn't you think you should apply that to free sparring? But most of what's in a form is grappling based self-defense, not punching, kicking, and blocking.
Hope that helps.
