1.20.2007

Dancing; with beauties and blades

In the past week I've been able to take up again two of my favorite extra-curricular activities at TAC, ballroom dancing, and fencing.
We've had two dance classes with Dan (our resident dance instructor), and although the class composition has changed a bit, with some people dropping out from last semester, and some people from his Sunday class joining us, it's still been
Last week we spent the entire class learning a rather intricate waltz move, four measures long, in which the guy swirls and swoops across a large part of the dance floor with the girl. We all laughed at each other's first attempts, but by the end we were doing much better, and one might even say some of us looked graceful and elegant while dancing it.
This week we spent the class reviewing the Rumba, one of a few dances that Dan is trying to get more of here at TAC dances, because he likes more variety than just swing and the occasional waltz. We reviewed everything from last semester, learned how we could incorporate the cool new waltz move from the previous week into Rumba, and got tips and pointers on how to improve our form, since Dan cares much more about rhythm and form that performing a multitude of fancy moves.
The Wednesday night dances have also been going well, and I think moving them from outside of St. Augustine's to inside of St. Pat's was a good idea. For one thing, it's been unseasonably cold (for California), and people don't like dancing outside, because while it gets into the 60s or 70s during the day, it drops into the 40s at night. Also, in St. Pat's the have 5 very nice sofas where people can sit when they're not dancing. While this is nice for the girls, it's also had the effect of causing some of the guys to just laze around, which is a problem since there are generally only three or four of them for ten or so girls. If they're foolish enough, as they once were, to all sit on one sofa, I can enlist the aid of a few willing girls and tip it over, which was quite fun, but otherwise the only thing I can really do it play good music, so I've been trying to learn which songs the freshmen like best (since they're generally the only ones who show up anymore, and they like different songs than my class and the sophomores).

In a different type of dancing, the fencing club that I've been trying to start for awhile has really been taking off, with the leadership and support of Mr. Appleby. Sometime last semester he convinced the school that enough people were interested that they should purchase a couple helmets, blades, and gloves, and some people who previously did fencing brought their equipment back after Christmas, so that now we can have quite a few matches going on at once. We've also been having regular meetings at noon on Wednesday, with more people coming every week. Last week we had at least a dozen people there, and three or four fights going on at once. Most of the people are beginners, although there are people like Scofield and Yano who have fenced before, and Duffy and I who have been practicing since last year. Mr. Appleby himself goes fairly frequently to a local fencing club where he practices sabre, and he said if theres enough continued interest, he might be able to get his instructor to come up here to give real lessons.
I've learned about the foil from Yano for awhile, but it's only in the past few weeks that I've begun to learn the sabre from Mr. Appleby. The styles of fighting, though both fencing, are vastly different. To start with, in foil, to score a hit, you need to press the tip of your blade against the torso (not including arms or head) of your opponent with at least one pound of pressure (enough to break human skin). However, since the sabre is not only a thrusting but a slashing weapon as well, all that is needed for a hit is for the blade to touch your opponent anywhere above the waist, and now the arms and head are valid targets as well. Since you can both thrust and slash, and your target area is larger, sabre is a much faster sport. In fact, in order to slow it down they don't allow crossing your feet over. In foil or epee, when attacking you can actually run at your opponent, but now in sabre you must only advance by the short steps your can make without your back foot coming to the fore.
Even though it's more difficult at first though, I think it's more enjoyable than the foil, because there' an eve wider variety of attack, feints and parries, and it's especially fun for me, since me favorite moves are usually feints, while while those are quite possible with foil, it's even more fun in sabre to feint a slash from one direction, and then whip your blade around and smack them from the other side while their parry whistles ineffectively through the air in the other direction. The problem is that it leaves you rather open to attack, or even to their malparry hitting you, but since sabre, like foil, has a right-of-way rule, as long as it's one continuous attack, their lack of an effective parry will mean that they had no right to touch you, and if your attack is successful you will be awarded the point.
Once problem though, is that since sabre moves much faster, Duffy and I have a much harder time judging ourselves, and find it very helpful to have a third party to examine who had right of way or whose blade touched first.
So now I've talked to Mr. Appleby about having the school buy some sabres, since currently they only have foils, and we borrow Mr. Appleby's sabres to fight. Then maybe we'll being to schedule duels over classroom disagreements for the lunch entertainment of all. ;)
I look forward to stabbing Mr. Bolin with a finite blade. :P

Because this semester's classes have been mostly about infinity, about which Bolinides of Santa Paulus has some strange opinions. More on that later though.

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