On 6-7-8 October The Canne Open Budapest took place in Hungary, Budapest.
There were 24 people participating in the event. Eight people arrived from France, from 3 different Canne clubs. Four people came from Germany, and the others were Hungarian.
You can find a pdf of this report in the Multimedia > News Articles section of this website
Friday
On Friday, we started at 9 o'clock, and after a long warm-up we jumped into the workshops.
First Thomas Horstmeyer from Germany taught as some special, not widely used methods to manipulate the cane. He taught us how to flip the stick efficiently from the normal way of holding it to holding it upside-down. And then Thomas showed us how we can benefit from a reversely hold stick in transitional movements, and also how we can use this special position for defenses.
Second Xavier Lejeune from the Apache Club showed us their newly created speed and tactical routines. These routines are exercises built on each-other which are meant to help both the beginner cannist in understanding the basics of canne de combat, and the advanced fighters to get quickly into the right mode e.g. before a competition.
Saturday
On Saturday everyone arrived and we moved to an even bigger gym than on Friday.
In the morning Daniel Boulanger (from club ASCB) lead a warm-up.
Than we learned some Hungarian folk dances which use a staff. Our instructor was Gergely Csiki, a renowned Hungarian folk dancer, and folk-dance teacher.
Next Nicole Holzman and Thomas Horstmeyer gave us a very detailed workshop on tactics. They talked about the role of intents in a fight, and made some exercises which are meant to develop a fighter's ability to enter a fight with an intent, and to observe the opponent's intent. Than they introduced the concept of mode which is a bunch of related techniques, tactical intentions, movement patterns etc. The concept of modes (and the related exercises) can help a fighter to change her way of fighting quickly and several times during an assault. Nicole and Thomas gave some examples of the modes they use in their fights, and led some exercises where we could also try out these modes.
After our well-deserved lunch Sophie Bordier gave us a workshop about a defense-exercise that she finds particularly useful. At the same time Jean-Luc Haouzi gave us a detailed explanation with cleverly designed exercises on how to turn (do a vault) on one leg, and how to play with the distance while turning.
At three o'clock we started with the system of challenges. The goal of the system was that you could decide who you want to fight with. We used a board, and to limit the number of times one person can be challenged we used pre-written cards. When you wanted to challenge someone you wrote your name on the board in the challenger column, and picked up the card of your challenged one and put it into the challenged column. You could challenge someone to a fully refereed fight or to a friendly sparring, without judges and referees. You could also determine the type of fight, which could be single canne, double canne, baton, canne-chausson, or anything else you agreed on with the one you challenged.
The system was successful, the board was soon filled with names, and we fought in three different areas for almost 3 hours.
We closed our training session with a long stretching, just to go ahead for even more relaxation in the Lukács bath. We all enjoyed the warm pools and the saunas until the very last minute the bath was open.
Sunday
On Sunday first Xavier Lejeune gave us a workshop about demonstrations. Xavier considers demonstrations as another option besides competitions, or an option for those who are not interested in the competitive part of canne de combat. He and his club did several demonstrations in the last few years, and Xavier shared many useful advice that they learned during these demonstrations. We learned e.g. what is the role of a judge during a demonstration, or that vertical hits look better and more spectacular for the untrained eyes than horizontal ones, or that besides demonstrating our technical skills we should also care about what image we show about ourselves as a club, and that simple tricks (like touching hands after each assaut) can help to improve this image. We learned about what to do with a fallen stick, and we also about some basic choreographies (canne-hip-hop fight, one hero vs many bad guy, or one bad guy vs many good guy). Naturally this teaching was not a theoretical one, we tried out every concept we learned.
Second Julien Falconnet gave us a workshop about judging. He talked about the most important priorities in judging, the different but connected roles of referees and judges, and the ways a referee or a judge perceives a fight.
Before lunch Xavier gave us yet another workshop about some rule-changes that took place in France. We were all shocked that the one thing we all found most difficult in the rules of canne, the lunge is no longer necessary in its old form, the new rules are much more liberate about what counts as a valid lunge. We had the opportunity to try to fight according to the new rules, and see how it changes our assauts.
After lunch Nicole and Thomas ran another workshop, they taught some techniques that they find particularly useful, or just good-looking. We learnt an effective way of doing the traversé, and uncommon defense technique, and several others.
From about three o'clock we again started with the challenges, and had lots of good fight. We closed the day in an almost capoeira-way, we sit down in a circle, started music, and two people entered the circle to fight until one became tired enough to be replaced by another fighter.
