Historical dancing, historical fencing… and a bear, with Sarina Wagner

The Sword Guy Podcast

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.com/podcast/historical-dancing-historical-fencing-and-a-bear-with-sarina-wagner/

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Sarina Wagner is a musical actress and dancer who trained at the University of Music and Arts of the City of Vienna, which is probably the best place in the world to do that. She is a historical fencer focusing on Capoferro and Fabris, as well as Spanish destreza. She is currently a member of the Academia da Espada.

We talk about why Sarina moved to Vienna, and her work running workshops about musicians and dance. One of her favourite composers is Jean-Baptiste Lully, and she likes to do her fencing training to his operas. Have a listen here to see if you’d like to do the same:

(3. Symph., I. Movement // 6. Symph., I. Movement)
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ITjm7yPne7OTsUspx5p48?si=aa2708b74265446b

The above playlist also contains another of Sarina’s favourite composers, her fellow Bavarian, Christoph Willibald Gluck, plus a couple of tracks from Anton Bruckner.

We talk about how a grounding in dance can really help with fencing, and Sarina recommends all fencers go and take a few dance lessons – the waltz is an easy one to start with. And have a couple of beers first.

As promised, these are the books on historical dance Sarina is working from:

ORCHESORGRAPHY by Thoinot Arbeau (1589) (Sarina’s version is from Dover Publications, 1967)
COURTLY DANCE OF THE RENAISSANCE - A new Translation and Edition of the “Nobilta di Dame” by Fabritio Caroso (1600) (Sarina’s version is from Dover Publications, 1995)

In our conversation we talk about how we can learn from other disciplines, and Sarina sent an extra note to say, “[T]hanks to Chris Lee-Becker and Ton Puey and Academia da Espada for being so supportive and pushing this work forward, because it's also in the spirit of Academia, where everything from the era is supposed to flow together to develop a sense and understanding of the time. In my words, and this fits so well, because this is also how I see myself as an artist: interdisciplinarity.”

Finally, here’s a picture of the armoured bear, Don Herkules, who accompanies Sarina to events: https://swordschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image1-1024x683.jpeg