- Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Friday, 13th July 2012
The CombatCon Western martial arts/fight choreography/pop-culture conference ran in Las Vegas from July 7-9.
On Friday night Tony Wolf hosted a public screening of the Lost Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes documentary, followed by a Q&A session that ranged from production challenges to in-depth questions about Bartitsu history.
On Saturday morning Tony taught a very successful 2-hour Bartitsu intro seminar that attracted about 45 participants. The seminar covered Bartitsu history in a ten-minute precis and based much of the rest of the training on the synergy exercises being developed at the Bartitsu Club of Chicago, very gradually incorporating boxing, kicking, canonical stick and jujitsu techniques/kata/set-plays, then developed that into segue drills, stressing the idea of “combat improvisation” in the face of the unexpected.
The seminar finished with a short description of the modern revival and the explanation of the non-hierarchical, open-source approach aroused spontaneous applause.