Saturday, October 25, 2008

AEMMA in Ljubljana, Slovenia

The "Narodni muzej Slovenije " (National Museum of Slovenia), the organizers of the workshop, and sponsors of the workshop were "BTC City" (Slovenian business, shopping, recreational – entertainment and cultural centre) and "Rauch d.d." (provider of juices) presented "Delavnica srednjeveških Evropshik borilnih veščin " or Medieval European Martial Arts Workshop, the second of its kind in Slovenia on October 11-12, 2008. This follows the first workshop by David M. Cvet of AEMMA in 2005. This year's workshop featured five instructors including David M. Cvet from AEMMA Toronto. The first half of Saturday covered Fiore dei Liberi's "abrazare " (grappling) and "spada " (sword) by David. The lessons were oriented towards the application of distance and timing concepts. This was followed with the second half of Saturday with a Slovenian instructor from the Celje area, Igor Sancin, who has been working with Sigmund Ringeck's treatise for more than a decade. He is also in the process of publishing Slovenia's first Slovenian translation of a historical fencing treatise within a year. His technical understanding of Ringeck was clearly demonstrated during his class, conveying the necessary technical skills to incorporate Ringeck's concepts into German longsword fencing.

The second day of the workshop featured two instructors in the first half, Petr Matoušek from the Czech Republic and Martin Fabian from Slovakia representing "Spoločnosť pre výskum a praktické prevádzanie vznešeného umenia šermiarskeho " (The Free Brotherhood of the Honourable Art of Fencing) instructing initially on "ringen" or wrestling techniques of Ringeck, von Danzig and from the Codex Wallerstein. This was followed by longsword techniques led by Martin sourcing Joachim Meyer. The last instructor for the second half of Sunday was instructor Roman Vučajnk, from Ljubljana covering grappling and dagger techniques derived from Filipo Vadi.

The workshop's venue was a large gymnasium in central Ljubljana offering extremely high ceiling and tall windows creating an excellent workshop environment. Twenty students registered for the workshop and all felt very satisfied with the level and quality of training received. The weekend workshop included visiting the "Narodni muzej Slovenije " at 8:00pm for the opportunity to physically examine numerous medieval arms and armour artifacts from the museum's collection. A rare opportunity for the students of the workshop, and the second time the museum has offered students of such a workshop the chance to examine the artifacts, the first being on the Sunday evening after the weekend workshop in 2005.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice to see that there are wma practicioners in Slovenia!
My great-grand father was born in gorenje. I live in Brazil and I hope some AEMMA can come here too.
Good Luck!

Bruno Cerkvenik

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