En garde!

(Nick Pearce Photo)

To onlookers, fencing may look like random swordplay, useful if you’re, say Cyrano de Bergerac or a member of the Three Musketeers.

But, as I soon discovered, there is more to this sport than dropping white gloves and clanking blades. Welcome to “Fencing for Beginners.”

Dressed in a padded jacket that zips only in the back, long gloves and a screened facemask, instructor Mike Casey lifts his foil—a fencing term for “sword”—and demonstrates how to defend an oncoming attack.  In one smooth, quick move, Mr. Casey lunges forward and strikes away his opponent’s foil to the left and successfully touches the tip of his foil to his opponent’s chest.

The motion was so fast that if you blinked you missed it. I studied Mr. Casey’s fancy footwork each time he re-demonstrated the motion, but when it came to try out the drill for myself I was completely muddled. Was it lunge, jab, and then hit foils? It’s all I can do to coordinate running on a treadmill without falling off, how am I going to get my feet to shuffle like his and synchronize the motions of the foil?

Echoing my thoughts, Clare Waque says there’s a lot more footwork involved with fencing than she imagined.

“You don’t actually spend a lot of times hitting the swords against each other,” says Ms. Waque, a recent Dal grad, as she reflected on her second day of fencing.

Terms like agility, grace and speed are usually associated dancers, but totally applicable to fencing. Attempting to bounce, lunge, slide and glide, left to right, back to front, I gained a greater appreciation for swashbucklers Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom.
 
Mr. Casey describes the fluid movements of fencing like a game of physical chess. A fencer must be able to read their opponent, predict their move, and come up with a way to react to it – and quickly before their opponent attacks them.

Along with the cognitive aspect of fencing, there is also a physical side. “When someone first starts it up, I’ll often get the comment, ‘I didn’t realize that it was so much work,’” says Mr. Casey with a laugh.

Dal alum Lian Macausland said the first thing to cross her mind after the first class was, ‘What a brilliant quad workout’ and, ‘Oh my God, my wrist is sore.’”

“So surprising, but true fencing is a great workout,” continues Ms. Macausland, drawn to fencing via her love of history (fencing has been around since the days of Ancient Egypt); French culture (fencing as a sport was developed in France and the majority of fencing terms are still in French); and trashy romance novels.

Registration for the next session of fencing lessons is now open. Classes are held Mondays and Wednesdays from 7 to 8 p.m. at the Studley Dance Studio. The next session starts on Wednesday, Oct. 28 and runs until the end of the semester. All the equipment is provided and no experience is necessary. Call Dalplex (494-3372) to register.