Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Samurai Sword Workshop


Today I did a Samurai Sword workshop with Tetsuro Shimaguchi of KAMUI. He choreographed the fight scenes in Kill Bill I and was Crazy 88 #1, Miki. (He is the first one to die in the fight scene in Kill Bill - the one who Uma stabs and tosses into the water). He and his two assistants were wonderful! We learned how to bow, handle the sword (wooden ones to practice with) and 6 of the basic positions/cuts. We even did 100 repetitions of the cut exercise that real samurai do 2,000 of every morning. Then we sparred with the instructors, learned some choreography, and got to personally "kill" our instructor and then do the signature Uma pose and glare. I was the best at it! My evil eye really could kill. Because of my long background in dance, I was pretty good with all of the positions and body language. Its like dancing with a stick! The big thing was to keep your core straight and your body loose, which is my specialty. Especially because I did yoga today and was all warmed up from that. Speaking of yoga, my teacher calls me an X-man because of how flexible I am, lol. He keeps stopping the class to go "oh! Look everyone, look at what SHE can do! Why can you do that?" How embarrassing...

1 comment:

Amy said...

That looks good. I say it was fun and interesting.