David McCormick shares recent news and upcoming events: Hamlet David worked this summer with Bard on the Beach on Hamlet. The show has received excellent reviews, and there's still time to see it. David is credited as the Fight Consultant, under the auspices of Fight Director Nic Harrison, and received a Canada Council grant to…
The last week has been an interesting week in Western Martial Arts. The Audatia sword fighting card game being spearheaded by Guy Windsor of the Helsinki Sword School has well surpassed its funding target on IndieGoGo and is into some cool stretch targets. This project is absolutely worth funding so I recommend you follow the link and…
Read More... from Duello.TV for this Week and a Few Updates on the World of WMA
Riding Level II: Single-handed Transitions and Turns As you progress through your riding for mounted combat you will eventually want to be able to guide your horse without reins. In the interim, you will do most of your fighting with one hand on the reins. At level two we check on your ability to guide…
One of the advantages of our art is that we get to ‘stand up again’ after a mistake … or after meeting a better fighter. Yes, one does improve in fitness, reactive muscle memory, swordplay technique and ‘tactical thinking’ as one ‘spars’, practices and drills … but we must never lose sight that in medieval…
A couple of our instructors have been highlighted online in the last week, though in two quite different forums. Jennifer Landels was asked by Alex Waterhouse-Hayward to do some writing about herself to accompany a beautiful photograph he took of her around the time of the Shakespeare's Rebel event. It's gracefully written and gives you…
Read More... from A peek inside the world of two Duello instructors
The next 4-hour workshop in the fundamentals of Victorian self-defence will be on 9 September. This will be our final Introduction to Bartitsu workshop. To better integrate students and improve the learning process, the introductory work will be spread over a month of Saturdays starting in October. Each week, two hours to Fight Like Sherlock…
Don't miss our next round of Beginner's Courses, starting the first week of September! Whether you join our Taste of the Renaissance or our Warrior Fundamentals program, prepare to get a unique workout that engages both your mind and body. Take it from student Tris H, who found the classes so valuable that she immediately…
Classes are cooking along at Academie Duello this week. One thing I have been excited about in Vancouver is the increasing number of women in our programs. We have always had a good ratio of men and women but in last night's Green Cord portion of class we had 12 students and only 2 of…
Riding Level 2: Regaining the stirrups In Riding Level 1 we asked you to drop your stirrups and retake them at the walk. In level 2, you'll be asked to: 6. Drop stirrups at sitting trot and regain at walk There's not much I can say about regaining the stirrups that hasn't already been covered…
There’s nothing local found this week, but Eastern Europe continues its traditional love-affair with all things historical and sword-like. The Ukraine, Poland, Belarus and Russia all have WMA/HEMA competitions that have ‘hundreds’ of participants, with thousands of spectators – and often have strong municipal and provincial support as well. Their different sword-cultures are long and…
Some cool spots about Academie Duello showed up in a couple publications in the last two weeks. Patrick von Stolk of Briefed.ca an online men's magazine focusing on the Vancouver area came in and tried out Warrior Fundamentals last week. Briefed is beginning a new series of articles on fitness in the Vancouver area that's…
Choreography should be more than stringing together combat movements in a random order. Based on last week's post Character in Choreography, you have some ideas how to customize your performance of a fight, but what about fight design? The Videogame Fallacy I love fighting games, and you can learn a lot about fighting styles from…
Riding Level 2: Basic Seat Position I harp on it because it's so important. Everything you want to do on board a horse is so much easier when you start with good position. For Riding level 2 we want to see: 5. Basic seat position: walk & trot, sitting & rising with correct diagonal This…