The new year is upon us and 2014 is winding to a close. This past year we celebrated our 10 year anniversary, welcomed a whole new team of staff at the front desk, saw our first second-level students in two programs (Youth and Bartitsu) put on some awesome performances, and made our way through some financial struggles and out the other side. In this next year, the stage is set for new programs, new classes, our first silver cords, visitors from around the world, and new adventures of all kinds.
Academie Duello has always been a business, a school, and a family. So with that in mind I thought I would share some of the highlights from the past year and the year to come….
Financially Forthcoming
I thought I’d address the financial end of things first. This has been an up and down year for us. We have had both our best and worst times. Running a school in a rapidly growing and increasingly pricey city like Vancouver is challenging. Our goal is to create something that is special and accessible to all who are interested in learning and pursuing these arts. Academie Duello costs three times as much to run now as it did when we first moved to our current location in October 2009. It was a tough choice to raise the rates but it was one we had to make for the future health of the school. I appreciate how supportive all of our members have been in seeing us through this increase and sticking with us.
Programs Past and Future
You may not know it but Academie Duello now has 8 different programs: Beginners', Mastery, Warrior, Youth, Archery, Mounted Combat, Bartitsu, and Stage Combat. Beyond that you can also do mounted archery (we hosted 3 workshops in 2014 and more are in planning for 2015), duelling sabre (the study group has just moved to Saturdays at 3 pm), and German wrestling (Fridays at 3:30 pm). This year I expect to see more new programs on the schedule. We have already put in some new longsword classes, and we’re looking into expanding our offerings to add more sidesword, an abrazare (Italian wrestling) class, and many more opportunities to learn, practice, and grow—especially with our new Clinic classes. You can check out our new schedule here.
David McCormick and Darren Devlin at grips in Bartitsu
Workshops and Seminars
We had a lot of excellent workshops in this past year. First we had Greg Mele from the Chicago Swordplay Guild come and join us for a weekend intensive on Fiore’s arts, which gave us a different take on what we already do in our school. Robert Borsos who practices the Kassai archery tradition delivered several mounted archery workshops for us, helping propel a few of our students toward the intermediate level in this beautiful and challenging historic art. Carosella, our yearly mounted combat series of workshops and tournament, enjoyed sunny weather for the first time! We were also visited by Luís Preto for the first of hopefully several more intensives on the Portuguese stick fighting art of Jogo do Pau.
Greg Mele conducting a dagger control
Robert Borsos at Carosella
This year we’re going to be kicking off workshops with the amazing Vancouver International Swordplay Symposium which will be bringing world-renowned instructors in from as far away as Helsinki, Finland. We’re also going to be expanding our workshop offerings with a greater focus on topics that deepen students’ understanding of the heart of our arts from combative application, from working with sharp swords, to meeting and interacting with other martial disciplines from outside European traditions.
Lots of New Faces
In a given month more than 250 people come to our regular classes and that does not include the hundreds more that attend corporate sessions, school groups, parties, or drop in as visitors of the sword-fighting and arching variety. This year we’ve seen 12 new graduates to the blue cord in our Mastery program, our first 2 youth blue cords, as well as our first 5 blue sashes in the Bartitsu program. In Mounted Combat we have 5 new green spurs.
This summer we also had our fullest Knight Camp season ever. We ran 7 full camps for a total of more than 120 young knights in training, new and old. We even made a new Knight--Sir Colin McCuaig who came to his first camp in 2009.
End of Camp Group Shot
Not only did we see a large crowd of new students join us, we also welcomed a whole new team to the front desk including Jon, Miguel, and Niamh (pronounced NEEV). These three are doing a great job—though it doesn’t stop us from missing Rosie and Sophia who are both off expanding their minds at university!
Outreach and Performance
Getting out there into the world has always been a big part of how we promote ourselves and spread the word. This year we were at Celtic Fest, the Canada Day Parade, Imaginarius Fantasticus, Car Free Day, and a host of other awesome events. Our performance team put on some of its hottest gigs and we actually have lots of videos to prove it this time!
At the beginning of September we partnered for the second time with Bard on the Beach for "Fight Night", a night of swordplay and Shakespeare that again brought us together with our friends Christopher Gaze and CC Humphreys. A video of the night has just been put together; you can see it here:
Beyond demonstrations we also spread the word throughout Canada and the world. In May, I travelled and taught in five different countries including Belgium, France, Spain, Germany, and Finland before returning home only to immediately go and teach in Ottawa. Jen Landels, the head of our Mounted Combat program, was invited to teach at the Rossfechten Symposium in Switzerland, which was a great honour. Clint, our head of Programs at the Academie, taught a weekend-long rapier seminar in Saskatchewan. To close things out I travelled again to Chicago to teach at the DeKoven School of Arms.
Class 2 Photo from the Halbardiers in Bruges
This year, beyond bringing the world to us with VISS, I will be travelling again to Europe in June, and several other workshops are in the planning stages. We’ll also be heading out to parade through Vancouver's streets for Celtic Fest and Canada Day again. This time I want to see us break the 100 person goal!
Head of the Canada Day Parade
More to Come
When our doors open on January 2nd, I’m looking forward to seeing our shiny, beautiful training floor — it’s getting refinished as I write. I’m also looking forward to helping bring even more to our programs this year. Our new workshops and class topics promise a range of experiences, some of which are aimed at deepening our students' understanding of the arts we practice, while others will offer the chance to gain broadened horizons by studying with experts in similar arts from around the globe. This year we will also see our first instructor training intensive, our first satellite classes, our first official external study groups, a whole new Duello.TV, the release of several books and DVDs, and a whole new look at how students advance and grow in our arts.
It’s going to be an exciting year and I’m looking forward to making more great memories with all of our staff and students.
Happy New Year!
Devon Boorman is the Co-Founder and Director of Academie Duello Centre for Swordplay, which has been active in Vancouver, Canada since 2004. Devon’s expertise centres on the Italian swordplay tradition including the arts of the Renaissance Italian rapier, sidesword, and longsword, as well as knife and unarmed techniques. Read more from Devon Boorman.