2011 Minnesota Renaissance Festival–Martial Arts Special Edition

Each weekend at the Renaissance Festival has a theme and special acts. While it was a Middle Eastern theme featuring belly dancers, there was a one day only demonstration of martial arts on the schedule. Of course I was curious about it and went over to check it out at the 1 PM performance.

Instead of people kicking and punching while breaking the occasional board, I was delighted to find it was a Japanese sword combat school putting on the display. Even better, it wasn’t bamboo rods but sharpened steel blades being used.

 

Things opened up with traditional drum beating and horn blowing. The latter turned into a comedy routine along the way. A man in full armor (rusty at that) came up to harass the horn blower for not being loud enough.

Whereupon the blond belly dancer defended him with a giant foil covered cardboard can opener and chased the knight off. It was bit of levity before things got serious.

The master of the dojo instructed his students to sit on the mat, senior students in front, juniors in back. There they performed individual practice draws. Yes, those are sharpened blades.

Following the draws, wooden swords were brought out for practice exercises. To the casual glance it looked like kids fooling around, but if you watched closely you could see they were paired off senior with junior. This was as much instruction as demonstration and done slowly for this reason.

Then real duels began. These were much more serious as you can see by the expression on the senior here.

Kinetic would be my description of these bouts. They were primarily self judged and the combatants would break off to bow when they thought they would have been cut. Since they are mimicking the effects of fighting with a real blade, evasion and dodging are critical to survival.

The youngest student had a hard time of it, but the master kept encouraging her to try again. Eventually she got a cut through the tatami reed bundle, if a ragged one. She was so serious and nervous that you couldn’t help rooting for her.

A senior student took on two bundles at once. I thought he was moving slowly until I tried to capture him with the camera. What happened is his movements were so graceful and controlled that it only looked like he was slow. He really made it look effortless.

It was not a good day for this student.

This student came out with a triple the normal thickness bundle. A skeptical master asked him if he really wanted to try this and if he’d done it before. The answer was yes to both and away he went. First cut is shown here and he nearly pulled it off.

The second cut didn’t go as far in as the first, only getting half way. Not looking good.

Third time was the charm and succeeded when he changed the angle of the cut. The master said he didn’t think that was what made the difference, though. Well deserved applause from his fellow students shows the spirit of the school.

This was the highlight of the festival for me and was the last thing I expected to see at a renaissance festival. But as they pointed out, the samurai were still going strong in Japan during the 1500’s to 1700’s. It is nice to know there is a school teaching this here in Minnesota.

2011 Minnesota Renaissance Festival Photo Tour Part 6

The biggest individual event at the festival has to be the joust. We connected with more friends who had come up and agreed to meet there. It is always packed so we thought arriving a half hour early would be perfect.

We were wrong.

It was already crowded and we ended up on the grass by the horse stables. Not a good vantage point at all. So if you go to this, prepare to arrive an hour early and be bored during that hour unless you have little kids participating in the games beforehand.

The same master of ceremonies that I remember from ten years ago is still conducting the joust. Technical issues with the wireless microphone setup made his brogue incomprehensible at times.

Like I mentioned before, not a good vantage point – especially for taking photos. Between the sun angle and all the floating dust it became apparent I wasn’t going to get the shots I’d hoped for.

The heel of the match, Sir William.

Moving the bars used for the kid games earlier in front of us didn’t help things. I believe our side’s champion was Sir Jacob in the green.

At this point in the afternoon (after 4 PM), the dust was a real pain and not just to taking pictures. Stinging eyes and filled sinuses were the order of the day.

Preparing to joust. These guys really hammered each other on and off horseback. Like professional wrestling it is all staged -- but the physical abuse is staggering.

I never was able to get the actual impact photographed. They converged near the boy who threw the autofocus out of whack. Even when that didn’t happen, my timing on the burst shots never worked out. In this case a direct hit took Sir Jacob out of the saddle with a resounding crash.

Musicians could be found everywhere and we passed this finely dressed lady as we headed out from the joust.

Sounds appetizing, doesn’t it?  Puke and Snot are the vulgar comedy duo that have become a franchise at the festival. One of them died several years ago and has been replaced. Didn’t find any unicorn burgers there, sadly enough.

Another glass blower shop with the dungeon in the background. We went into the dungeon which turned out to be a nice reprieve from the heat and humidity. The displays inside also gave Amber ideas.

I got excited when I saw a sign saying something about vikings at the mill. When I found out it was advertising football games at the pub attached to it I was disappointed. Now if they showed Norse berserkers beating each other to a pulp I’s be interested.

Since the exit is the same as the entrance, we had to carefully avoid the legendary and obnoxious pickle guy seen sans shirt at the right. Meanwhile, I’m being given the evil eye by the brunette on the left. Sorry darlin’, you aren’t my type.

I was going to write something flippant about the unicorn again, but the delighted expression on the little girl’s face made that impossible to do. Maybe the existence of unicorns can be be justified after all. Bah…

From there we exited and made our way out to the parking lot. It had been a fun day despite some dodgy weather.

For once I was financially prepared and picked up a couple of things including a leather check book cover. Only been shopping for one I’d actually like for fifteen years. This particular one isn’t on the Oh Susanna’s Leather’s website, but I’m pleased enough to link there anyway.

Not the end, for there is a special post dedicated to the martial arts exhibit yet to come.

Click for Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4  Part 5

2011 Minnesota Renaissance Festival Photo Tour Part 5

Something I had not seen before were harps on wheels. There were two different women playing at the festival and both were very good. Harps on wheels, what will they think of next?

Hedge wizards. You can’t go anywhere without one popping up.

One of the biggest hits of the trip were the delicious and glacially cold smoothies sold at multiple stands. Expensive like everything else, but so very worth it on a warm day. Once I got one, it was only a matter of time before the others succumbed to the lure.

Concentrated paradise and pain in a cup. They induced slightly delayed brain freezes in everyone but Brannick. Which left him open to smart aleck comments that you can easily guess.

After we warm up on him, the arguments guy appeared. Sadly, nobody was as sharp as the last time and the viciousness was decidedly muted. Epic fail.

Can’t have peasants without mud, can we? This industrious lass had a sign up with “Support the arts” on it.

Overhead a large metallic insect appeared. The zoom lens revealed it to be one of the smallest helicopters I’ve ever seen.

In contrast, a real insect showed up a bit later. Same lens, vastly different distances. Amazing how this turned out given how shaky my hands were. Have I mentioned I love this lens?

To be continued

Click for Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4

2011 Minnesota Renaissance Festival Photo Tour Part 4

Vegetable Justice is one of the perennial draws at the festival. Appealing to the dark side of human nature for its entertainment value, it consists of the target hurling abusive comments at the participants who, in return, hurl tomatoes. This lass flinched a bit too much in my opinion.

Chad could not resist the temptation to work out his anger issues. Maybe that girl was right to flinch…

The location of the festival is right next to train tracks and for the first time I saw one go by. It added to the surreal blending of eras already present.

After Chad failed to score a hit on the Vegetable Justice girl, the weather decided to get a tad hostile. Wind blew, light rain spat, and dust kicked up into the air.

Getting out of the rain for a bit of rest, I switched to the 55-200mm lens in one of the shops.  A test shot of the animal rides confirmed that I managed not to get any dust in the camera. While you can see the elephants, the camel there is not present in the picture. No unicorns to ride, thankfully.

At 1:00 PM there was a blacksmithing demonstration which was irresistible to our would be smiths, Brannick and Christian. Chad and I took off to check out the martial arts demonstration instead. That I’ll cover in a separate post.

I took this picture of gypsies pulling a cart just for Amber. I know she’ll appreciate it.

While half our group spoke to the dojo members about swords, I noticed blades of another sort being used a good distance away. Not used to the bigger lens, I decided to test it out. To my surprise it had enough reach to take decent pictures.

Once the Canon 55-200mm EF-S locked on, I became obsessed with capturing a knife in mid air.

After multiple shots, the last one produced a knife flying through the air at the spinning target. I love this lens!

Juggling followed the knife throwing and involved catching a lighted torch from another performer, then lighting the other torches with it while juggling them. I see a future tossing multiple pizzas at once in this guy’s future.

To be continued…

Click for Part 1  Part 2  Part 3

2011 Minnesota Renaissance Festival Photo Tour Part 3

Wherever you go at the Renaissance Festival, you will encounter people singing or playing an instrument. Back in the past, there were no iPods. So you had to lug an iBard around, which was an expensive and difficult thing to maintain. Only the wealthy could afford to house and feed them. Thank goodness for modern technology, eh?

I was pleased to see a Hmong craft stand. One of these days I will buy one of their spectacular beaded ties.

An unexpected celebrity sighting. Can you pick out the infamous face in the crowd?

Looks like Charlie Sheen, doesn’t it?  Riding a unicorn too. Turns out warlocks are part of the insidious unicorn conspiracy…

Eventually the area became unicorn free and I was able to get a good picture of the traditional dancers in action.

The first of many stops at shops selling swords and other weapons. Badger Blades has a tree growing through the shop to add character.

The first of my attempts to ambush photograph my friends and probably the best result of the lot. Not good for a picture phobic to travel with others who are nearly as bad. At least Amber was amused by something, but Chad looks as suspicious as the blond in Part 1.

Besides swords, musical instruments were another siren call for our group. Sadly, the sign read “flutes” rather than “lutes” and Christian was foiled in his quest for the instrument.

The challenge of shooting a bow was irresistible and Christian, Chad, and Brannick all tried their hands at it. Chad came out on top with the best shot. The short bows were cute and the price was not horrible for them. I’ve already got too many bows and not enough arrows, so I passed.

There were signs up recruiting for the Royal Navy, which one should avoid if historically accurate. Only later did we discover it was for a war game of sorts with miniature ships. They were taking things down when we passed by.

To be continued…

Click for Part 1 and Part 2