The Dijon event is very much HEMAC's big event, uniting an ever increasing number of schools into a smoothly run and superbly relaxed event.
Amongst so many high points I have to choose a couple: Seeing Reinier (helping me in the pics below) fighting in the rapier tournament and using such calculating method was a real pleasure, he was calm and measured and when he did eventually lose, it was to a superb opponent.
And talking to Franck Cinato who has studied and taught I.33 sword and buckler pretty well as long as me (his book on the subject is one reason I will learn French), who said this: “I have a new hypotheses regarding a technique I would like you to consider”, this statement summed up what I love about the mind set of our community. We believe what we do is right, the way we do it is right, we have to to make the technique work with confidence and surety...but we constantly question, can it be better, safer, more efficient. This experience was repeated throughout the event, with Bigman Harry and with so many others, with this mindset we can only grow and improve, it is something we should make sure we never lose.
My bit...
My lesson was simple, the approach against first ward (under arm) in half shield, with the underlying argument that I.33 is in fact much more than a sword and buckler manuscript but it is also maybe the first rapier manual, sharing many similarities with the Spanish rapier schools. Primarily amongst these being the seeking out the opponents weapon or forcing them to present it to you, and using that contact to control the fight.
I hope the people that took part in the lesson enjoyed it as much as they said they did and that I communicated properly the concept of I.33 as a cautious and sophisticated system (a great advancement on my early sharp hard assault manner of teaching).
The workshop seemed to go well, all the questions that were asked were valid and people trained hard, worked well together and left saying nice things. You can't ask more than that.
The rest of the Saturday (again due to my short stopover I can only talk about the one day). Was spent judging (and slipping into the crowd to pic up on gossip). Which brings me to...
The competitions...
There were two competitions on the Saturday, the rapier tournament, which went smoothly and cleanly with some fantastic technique and clearly defined fighting styles.
and the synthetic tournament.
This is the only thing I had any gripe with and as I was judging maybe I should look at improving my that and keep quiet...however as I was part of it I feel justified in raising the issue...
My own feeling is that the relaxed and adaptive attitude that makes the rest of the event run so smoothly is not suited to the competition. In future we need a clearly defined set of rules that can be read questioned and practised towards at least 2 months before event, the registrations to fight should be in 1 month before the fight and them time allocated to the competition according to the number of entries. There were many points where as a judge I was confused by the rules (for example the amounts of flags raised were counted. this didn't make my job harder I just had to wave the things but if I was confused by them I can imagine how frustrating this must be for the competitors. That said, the fighters were superb, a fight between Anders and Axel of the GFHS was stunning to watch hugely athletic and above all skilled. When Anders was beaten later in the competition the combination of strike cover and second strike that took him down was textbook and clear, this more than made up for the shortcomings of the tournament. Again I have to stress I think that the things that made this tournament suffer are the very things that help the event on the whole feel so relaxed and accomplished, in every other aspect it helps, issues are rare and if they do arise they are dealt with calmly professionally, unless there is a PROBLEM there is never really a problem, in every other aspect of the event this is a great thing.
The evening was fantastic, with a greater amount of back rubbing than is usual but somewhat justified given that this was the ten year anniversary of what has always been and continues to be a great event (the gift from the Dreyn guys to Fabrice was fantastic and well earned).
As usual I arrived late and left early, I arrived to smiles and left to laughter I could not ask for a better experience.
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