Keeping your options open is an attractive concept and feels like freedom. It permits room for debate, changes of opinion and forgiveness. In most circumstances, I believe that the gentleman and the rational person avoids taking sides until the most information is analyzed. I believe in science. I wanted to get that messiness out of…
Read More... from Closure: Collapse the Possibilities, Go All In
Last night in class I brought up this idea of being a combination of demanding and compassionate with yourself when learning something new. If you want to become an excellent practitioner of something (and that is a worthy goal) then you are going to need to call on yourself to do something you can't yet…
Read More... from Compassionate Demand - Pushing your boundaries and enjoying it.
A thousand thanks to everyone who contributed some of their precious long weekend time to our double-barrelled work party on Saturday and Monday! On Saturday our team augured post holes, and made concrete footings for the post saddles in preparation for Monday's framing team, which measured, sawed, drilled and bolted the bones of the shedrow…
“You’re a mule, Brennan, fitted neither to a rustic life nor a professional one – a bloody anachronism – a social mule, public school educated, trained to appreciate Chartreuse in a world where you cannot afford beer, taught to use a rapier in a world where other bastards use guns.” Plummer, D. Brian. ‘Lepus’. Coch-y-Bonddu…
It's September already! Many of our students in Vancouver are heading back to University for their new year and many old faces return after summer vacations. It's a great time to get back to fundamentals. This week we are focusing on rapier movement fundamentals, cutting technique with the sidesword, and core skills of giocco stretto…
Read More... from [Videos] Rapier, Sidesword, and Longsword oh my!
Taking inspiration from Major Wes' post on this very blog called Staged Sword Press, let's talk about competitive stage combat. Art Contests In sporting competition, there is obvious scoring with the ball kicked across a line, or touches with a sword tip. Artistic expression has its own competitions, but they must be scored by a…
You are invited to a good old-fashioned barn raising! Okay - we're not raising a whole barn, but we are building a new shedrow shelter for our horses and we need a whole lot of talented, strong, wonderful people like YOU to help us! If you haven't been able to join us for a…
If you speak French or at least like watching moving pictures, take a look at this spot that appeared last month on CBC Television French about Academie Duello, Knight Camp, and me. They did a fine editing job to make my French sound semi-reasonable. Also appearing are Sabrina and Cartson, french speaking Knight Camp students,…
Swords and magic have been consistent companions since blades were first born of fire from raw chunks of rock. Even today, the ‘magical sword’ – be it blessed or cursed – is a mainstay in modern day fiction writing - and no little featuring in computer games!. Accessorise, accessorise, accessorise! SCHWÄBISCHE ZEITUNG (Leutkirch,…
Randy's at it again. This time some really good notes on why sparring is important to the development of the Art. There certainly is a difference between the theory of the art and its practice (Capoferro talks about it thus too). The lesson that I want to point out is that putting your theory into…
This week, I'm taking over the 7am SwordFit Bootcamp, and naturally, we're using Bartitsu skills as the foundation of our movements. One-hour Class Outline Welcome and Salute Warm Up: Jogging Jump rope (Jumping Jacks for those without rope) Medicine ball toss and catch with joint rotations Boxing: Preparation: Shadow boxing Free punching focus pads Lead…
Following my trip to the WWOC event outside Hannover, I headed north to Hamburgh to meet up with my good friend Roland Warzecha who hosted me for several days at his lovely country house outside of the city. On the first full day of my visit we headed to the medieval town of Lubeck known…
We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for this important announcement: Due to everyone being too mind-meltingly busy this month we have postponed the Mounted Games tournament till September 30th. However, since we have the time set aside this Sunday we will run a Practice TournamentSunday 26th August1pm - 4pmRed Colt Equestrian Farm Co-opcost: $5 (own…
Show of hands – how many ‘originally’ came to their interest in swordplay from reading books such as ‘Yvain’, ‘Scaramouche’ or ‘Prince Caspian’? One – two – three … OK, hands down. And those whom were captured by blade work after watching television or movies such as ‘The Mark of Zorro’, ‘The Princess Bride’, Scaramouche…
Welcome to your training for this week at Academie Duello and on Duello.TV. Green cords continue their work on cutting, in this week using cuts to recover from bad positions; Blues recover from disadvantaged positions by passing back into refused; and Reds will be using two swords to cover against powerful cuts. Green Cord (Level…
I'm blogging at your from beyond the internet....... oooOOOoooOOOooo! heh heh. Today I was going to write about the differences inherent in each of us (I thought I wrote about this but I couldn't find it). Take a look at this article. It's wisdom though needs to be somewhat massaged for fencing. Basically the message…
Just a brief reminder: Stage Combat and Bartitsu classes on Saturday 18 August are cancelled because your dutiful instructor will be at CNAT. See you next week! Comment on this post on our Posterous Blog.
I just read an article by Isaac Butler on the difference between amateur and professional theatre in the USA. It was inspired by a blog post about the same topic in photography. In the era of cheap(er) high quality cameras and Photoshop, the quality of the amateur's work is often comparable to professionals, and so…