Hello Everybody,
April was quite busy for us here in Poland. We had two events going on, one right after another. First - the annual HEMAC meeting in Dijon, France, then our ARMA-PL gathering in Poznan, Poland. Here's a brief report from the events:
Dijon
As usual, it was a pleasure to meet with our European friends from various countries - Matt Easton (Schola Gladiatoria), Matt Galas, Dave Rawlings (Boar's Tooth), Carlo Parisi, Claus Drexler, Hans Heim, Alex Kiermayer and the rest of Ochs, Colin Richards (Arts of Mars), Fabrice Cognot and many others.
A brief outline of the workshops:
Colin Richards - did a lot this year. Two workshops on footwork in the dagger, medieval sword and shield presentation, dagger demonstration. As usual, his insights were interesting and his sense of humour added a lot to this event.
Carlo Parisi did a demo and workshop on English backsword.
Dave Rawlings showed a refined interpretation of I.33 and did a workshop on winden with long sword and sword and buckler. Dave's I.33 is always worth seeing.
Matt Galas presented a nice outline of very basic drills for longsword and single-handed sword, dealing with basic transitions. Some very well-thought concepts on his part, which is not surprising, given the time he's been researching the subject.
Eli Steenput gave an interesting presentation on dagger.
Olivier Dupuis presented messer techniques from Codex Wallerstein and La Noble Science.
Frank Cinato presented something on I.33. It was in French. Let's leave it at that.
Fabrice Cognot presented his stuff on Le Jeu.
Philippe Williaume presented his workshop on Ringeck's Long sword.
Ochs presented Leckuchner's messer and some funny techniques. It was a nice demonstration and workshop.
Matt Easton presented Fiore's spear in a nice and orderly manner.
There was a very good workshop on Gatka - Indian martial arts, basicly sword and buckler. We had some real fun going at it.
Arte d'Armes gave a demonstration on CGM 558, an anonymous Swiss resource.
Marco Ruboli presented sword and dagger from Marozzo and Manciolino.
We gave our demo and workshop on Gladiatoria half-swording and dagger.
I think this is all. At least that's what I can remember.
Apart from demos and presentations, we enjoyed friendly sparring sessions for various weapons, and the tournaments - backsword and smallsword. Backsword was won by Colin Richards, and smallsword by some French guy whose name eludes me right now.
We had some really good time in Dijon, meeting friends, seeing what people do, sparring, talking, eating (although not as good as last year) and drinking. A lot of interesting ideas to ponder.
I've got videos of most of the things, so if you want them, contact me at [email]feniks@arma.lh.pl.[/email]
Poznan
This was a very good event, finally being able to gather and meet (almost) all these people from various places in Poland. It was also a very interesting experience, watching different attitudes and approaches towards the same things. We had every group presenting itself and showing a brief demonstrations of what they do.
The best demonstrations were the one by ARMA-Poznan dealing with Meyer's longsword, dagger and halberds, and by ARMA-Wroclaw, dealing with Ott's wrestling. We had also Gladiatoria demonstration and two short Liechtenauer ones.
On the first day there were workshops on Meyer and Ott, on the second - Gladiatoria. We enjoyed them thoroughly, especially Patryk's warm-ups and conditioning excercises.
This event was an important step forwards in ARMA-PL, similar to what International Gathering achieved for ARMA. We got many people together and were able to put a real person behind a simple photograph on the webpage, and it turned out that despite several fierce arguments and different approaches, we still got along very well.
Short snippets from both events can be found at our webpage:
arma.lh.pl/zrodla/filmy.html
Enjoy
Bart
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