Dances With Swords
The lineage of my swords, and their place in my dance
“Hey, Bella, what kind of swords do you dance with and where did you get them?”
All three of my official dance swords were gifts. 🥰🙏🥰
Two are thin dancing sabers with decorative scabbards. The heavy one has a lioness-eating-fox hilt. Although she is aptly named The Lioness, she has informed me that she prefers her nickname.
“Dinnertime.”
She was passed down to me in 2001 from a friend who began dancing in California in the 80s. This gift came in celebration of my triumphant RAWR when I proved half my doctors wrong after they said I’d never be a professional dancer again.
My answer: WATCH ME.
The other saber is cut similarly but with simple decoration. She came from an antique shop in Colorado Springs, and was my first dance sword, gifted to me in 1998 by my Knight in the SCA.1 I dance with Serpent’s Kiss a lot less because she’s lighter, and I prefer some heft with the objects I balance on my head.
Way easier to keep a heavier sword perched up there while you’re doing a crescent kick, a bounce-drop to the floor and back, rolling around on the ground, or axe-kicking the snot out of air.
However, the lighter one is purrrrrfect for wielding in my weaker left hand when I do double sword.
(Serpent’s Kiss is also awesome for rebuilding strength and stamina after not being able to put a sword on my head for the past six years. Now that we’ve been undoing the backwards curve in my neck, I’m starting to be able to sword dance again—WOOT! This lighter sword is my go-to grrrrrl for this reclamation project.)
My last and newest addition to the dance sword family is The Beast. She is one of those ginormous, heavy suckers, often advertised on Google as “Fire Dance Moorish Scimitar.”
The Beast was dropped on my doorstep by my student/costumer/friend before moving away from Colorado just before I did in 2012. Although The Beast is stunning, she is way too much monster for anybody with arthritic joints and neck issues.
As such, I’ve done way more photography with her than dancing. After all, I’m a martial artist, so balancing a sword on my head is only a small part of my sword dance. Occasionally I won’t even put it up there.
Why? Because it’s expected and…
Well, I’m me.
I also have been known to dance with any of my martial training weapons, like my wooden bokken and its wooden sheath, my 9-ring broadsword, or a staff. (I have a light, black fiberglass one decorated with a tiger, the big wooden clonker, and my glamazon staff: shiny silver with a pink grip. Wut? It’s pretty.).2
I don’t tend to dance with the battle axes, the spiked mace, or the equally spiky morning-star flail, because they’re all too heavy. The gladius is a behemoth, too, but…well…it’s a gladius so gladiatrix-wanna-bes never cease trying.
However, when music is on and I have stick(s) in my hand, dancing sometimes happens then, too. (Sticks-of-many-names designed for Arnis/Kali/Escrima.) Oh, yeah. And then there are my Moroccan daggers with the gorgeous, droolable hilts, as well as the training daggers for playing stabby-slashy, pokey-proddy with friends.
“Hey, Bella, you call yourself a martial artist? Shit, girl, you look like a clumsy 5-year-old swinging those swords around!”
Gotta love the safety of ignorant anonymity in a YouTube comments section.
Let’s at least cure the ignorance part, shall we?
The thing you need to understand while watching anybody wield these types of swords in a remotely martial manner is that they were NOT MADE FOR WIELDING.
Every one of my martial instructors or playmates who has ever picked up one of my dance swords: “OMG! What the hell!”
Yeahhhh, they were made for perching on the head while dancing, so the balance is out near the center of the blade. This means that when you extend the sucker out from your body—without supporting the tip in your off-hand—all that weight is like hucking a bag of bricks around, not a finely crafted instrument for doing deft, dark, deadly things.
But I’m a martial artist, yo. So when I get something in my hands that is shiny and pretends that it’s sharp (wise dancers do NOT perform with legit bladed weapons, especially with other humans in range), I can’t help swinging it around like I’m lopping something’s head off or protecting my own.
UP NEXT: Why I sometimes don’t put the sword on my head. It’s not only to be contrary to the norm. It’s because I have a story to tell.
© 2020 Hartebeast
“Dance sword gifted by a Knight, what?! SCA huh?” Medieval reenactment in heavy armor. We cover the down-n-dirty basics of that in this post:
Damsel To Dangerous
You can see more of the swords and other weaponage in action in the video I made for this post. It also introduces you to my WATCH ME journey when my doctors said I’d never dance professionally again:
Myths & Realities About the Black Belt Almighty
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Impressive!