SUMMER WORKSHOP 2023
WELCOME TO VILJANDI!
This year’s NSFS Summer Workshop will be held in Viljandi! It’s a quaint and friendly small town in the south of Estonia, just about a two hours drive from the capital.
The Summer Workshop is a great place to meet likeminded people, sweat like there’s no tomorrow and have fun while doing it. Stage combat relies mostly on trust, partnerwork and safety so don’t be afraid to join, even if you have no previous experience.
See you in July!
This year’s workshop principal is Kaire Russ – a certified teacher from the Estonian Stage Fight Society. Trainings will be held at the sports centre with parks and a very swimmable lake just a short walk away.
Classes
Participants take classes based on their prior stage combat experience and education. In all
classes, emphasis is put on combining safety, artistic value and technique.
When registering for the workshop, you are asked to list your previous training and choose a
class to participate based on that training. The workshop consists of two types of courses.
There are three certification courses and four showcase courses for different levels of
experiences.
Fourth classes are special classes depending of the day.
During the second week of workshop, fourth class slot will turn into own training, which will be choreo training focusing either to a certification examination (for certification courses) or to the showcase performance (for showcase courses).
Final day of the workshop will be Saturday 22nd of July. The day will start with a common warm-up at 9.00. The day starts with certification tests and finishes into the showcase performance and final party.
All the accommodation options we have organized will have their check-outs on Sunday morning which is also why 23rd has been named as the official final day of the workshop. A more detailed final day program will be announced later.
Some changes to these might still occur before and during the workshop.
Showcase Courses
The Showcase Courses will finish in a showcase performance in front of a live audience during the final day of the workshop. The showcase schedules will be published later.
The courses will follow the nine disciplines within the NSFS certification system. Beginner course trains skills in block 1 disciplines: single rapier, broadsword, and unarmed combat. Showcase 2 course focuses on two-handed block 2 weapons: quarterstaff, rapier and dagger, and sword and shield. Showcase 3 focuses on block 3 weapons with smaller target areas and stylized movement and contains knife, smallsword, and theatrical martial arts.
Beginner Showcase
Beginner course is the start of the journey. During the course a student will learn the basics of block 1 disciplines.
TEACHERS BY TOPIC:
Unarmed: Iiro Heikkilä
Rapier: Kaire Russ
Broadsword: Anders Jacobsson
Showcase 2/Block 2
The Showcase 2 focuses on the three block 2 weapon disciplines which all use two hands.
TEACHERS BY TOPIC:
Rapier and Dagger: Ian Rose
Sword and Shield: Kaire Russ
Quarterstaff: Anders Jacobsson
The course works together with same material as Certification 2 course but focuses during the second week to the Showcase performance.
Showcase 3/Block 3
The Showcase 3 course will consist of training in the three block 3 disciplines, and more stylized
and precise acting choices.
TEACHERS BY TOPIC:
Knife: Bo Thomas
Smallsword: Ian Rose
Theatrical Martial Arts: Kristoffer Jørgensen
The course works together with same material and with the same schedule as Certification 3 Course but focuses to the Showcase performance during the second week.
Advanced course
Advanced course consists of training in a variety of weapons and fight performer skills. Focusing on the film work on the first week and live stage work on the second week. Advanced course is for advanced fighters, stunt performers, movers, dancers etc. It is a course that can take your skills into a higher level focusing for the actual industry needs and developing the art form of stage combat.
Students can participate only one week or both weeks.
The first week (10-16 of July) of the advanced training is dedicated to the film and stunts. Big focus will be how to create good fight choreography for the film. Taking into consideration the story, characters, camera work, location, stunts etc.
TEACHERS BY TOPIC:
Film Choreography: Kristoffer Jørgensen & Kaire Russ
Stuntwork: Kristoffer Jörgensen & Iiro Heikkilä
Stair falls: Bo Thomas
Cool Fight Small space: Bo Thomas
Cool Fight: Ian Rose
Parkour in Film: Märt Madisson
Filming the Fight Scenes: Tarvo Tammeoks
The course will end with students performing in their own created fights that they created throughout the course. These scenes will be filmed and edited by a professional operator/editor.
This material you are free to use later on in your acting/stunt reel.
The second week (17-23 of July) of the advanced training is dedicated to the live stage and tricks and perks of the trade. Big focus will be how to create good fight choreography for the live stage. Taking into consideration the story, characters and different sizes of the stage and audience placing in the room or outdoor stage. Also one against many in a fight will be in the focus as this is usually what is asked from the fight director in the industry.
TEACHERS BY TOPIC:
Live Stage Choreography: Kristoffer Jörgensen & Kaire Russ
Stage Tricks of the Trade: Kristoffer Jörgensen & Iiro Heikkilä
One Against Many: Kristoffer Jørgensen & Iiro Heikkilä
Cool Fight: Bo Thomas
Slapstick: Bo Thomas
Cool Fight: Ian Rose
Furniture in the Fight Scene: Hellar Bergmann
The course will end with the live show, to try out all the great stuff learned from the course.
Certification Courses
In this workshop there is a corresponding Certification course for every block of NSFS system. You may take part in a certification course when you have trained 15 hours (or 20 for block 1) in a weapon style, and passed all your certification tests in the previous blocks.
Every course will start recapping the basic techniques specific to the weapon disciplines. At the end of the first week the teachers will introduce a set of moves, a test choreography. The test itself will consist of training this choreography with a partner, creating and practicing a short scene around it. The final scenes are performed in front of a group of judicators on the last week’s Saturday and will be graded in terms of safety and performance potential. A “safe pass”
is when the performance has all the basics of safety and coherent story-telling down. A “performance pass” is when the scene shows a higher level of stage combat techniques. See more details about the grades in the NSFS handbook.
If you have any questions regarding the requirements and whether your prior training and tests fulfill them, please contact workshop staff at lavavoitlus@gmail.com and we will help you out.
Certification 1
The Certification 1 course is the first formal step of a student’s journey. It will finish in three NSFS certification tests in block 1 disciplines: unarmed, broadsword and rapier. Naturally a student doesn’t have to do all the tests at the same time but can test just one or two of the disciplines.
TEACHERS BY TOPIC:
Unarmed: Lasse Friborg & Bo Thomas
Rapier: Anders Jacobsson
Broadsword: Iiro Heikkilä
Certification 2
The Certification 2 will test the skills in block 2 disciplines: rapier and dagger, sword and shield, and quarterstaff. These movement styles are seen as more complex than ones in block 1 where the focus is more in a fluent use of basic language of stage combat.
TEACHERS BY TOPIC:
Rapier and Dagger: Ian Rose
Sword and Shield: Kaire Russ
Quarterstaff: Anders Jacobsson
Certification 3
The Certification 3 will focus on the disciplines of theatrical martial arts, smallsword and knife. All these styles use more stylized acting choices than the other blocks. Physical storytelling should convey feelings of danger and threat while working with weapons that look much less threatening than the weapons from the other blocks.
TEACHERS BY TOPIC:
Knife: Bo Thomas
Smallsword: Ian Rose
Theatrical Martial Arts: Kristoffer Jørgensen
Here are the teachers!
Kaire Russ (NSFS, Summer Workshop principal, Estonia)
Kaire Russ is a film director, script writer, fight choreographer and a NSFS Stage Combat Instructor. Kaire graduated in Film and TV directing in Madrid Escuela de Artes y Espectáculos TAI in 2008 and her acting studies in 2014 at the Acting and Collaborative Theatre course in Sweden.
Kaire has taught many stage combat workshops mainly in Estonia but also all around the Nordic countries. She has directed many fight scenes both in theater and film. Kaire is a board member of the Estonian Stage Fight Society and one of the most active professionals in Estonia who wants to make stage combat an even more known form of art.
Ian Rose (Fight director, USA)
Ian Rose has arranged fights for commercials, film and stage, and has been working in the New York and Philadelphia areas for over twenty-five years. Ian is a Fight Master with Fight Directors Canada and The Society of American Fight Directors. Ian has worked on Broadway, the Bridewell Theatre in London, MTM Studios in Rome, Riverside Shakespeare and Interborough Repertory Theatre in New York City, the Whole Theatre in New Jersey, the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival and Philadelphia Theatre Company.
Bo Thomas (NSFS, Denmark)
Bo Thomas is a professional stuntman, stage fight performer, actor and choreographer in both film, television, theater, shows and live reenactment and a certified teacher in stunt and stage fighting. He is also one of the few certified NSFS Fight Directors. He has, since 1985 coordinated, choreographed and performed in about 350 productions.
Bo teaches stunt, stage fight, physical performance and slapstick to actors, opera singers, ballet dancers, students and children. He has since taught regularly on all levels at the annual NSFS summer workshop.
Kristoffer Jørgensen (NSFS, Norway)
Kristoffer Jørgensen is one of Norway’s very few veteran stuntmen. He has done stunts and safety work on numerous films and TV productions. He is the CEO of Arctic Action, the world’s northernmost stunt company, with offices in Tromsø (Norway) and Reykjavik (Iceland). He has worked professionally on more than 100 stage productions. He is a senior instructor with the Nordic Stage Fight Society (NSFS), and one of the mentors for NSFS instructor trainees. He regularly teaches stunt work, stage fighting and related subjects at seminars and masterclasses throughout the world, combining Eastern and Western disciplines, he started training martial arts at an early age, and is a black belt holder in aikido. Another influence is the circus; he has an additional background as a director and performer in contemporary circus and live action shows, having toured throughout Norway as well as visiting Russia, Estonia, Finland and Japan.
Iiro Heikkilä (NSFS, Finland)
Iiro Heikkilä is a teacher at Dramatic Combat Finland. BA of circus arts. MA of sport science. Truck driver, sport massage therapist and pyrotechnician. He is a performing artist with a dance and circus background who graduated from NSFS mentor program in 2019, and has been co-teaching with Oula Kitti for half a decade. He has been performing as a professional on stage and screen mainly in musicals and physical theater productions since 2004.
Anders Jacobsson (NSFS, Sweden)
A member of the NSFS since its inception and a graduate from the first batch of teachers, Anders is one of the “old guys” in the Society. He has performed, taught and choreographed fights since 1997 on national stages, including the Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm City Theatre and the Drottningholm Palace Theatre, as well as on film and at workshops and courses big and small. For the past eight years Anders has been the main teacher for Stage Fight STHLM, a stagefight collective with weekly training in Stockholm. Current interests: Finding ways to integrate natural movement and accelerated learning concepts into stage combat.
Tarvo Tammeoks
Tarvo has been active in TV and advertising since 2005. Since 2016, mainly as a producer, director and camera operator. Successfully completed and warmly received projects include popular TV shows, commercials and documentaries.
Tarvo will be filming and editing the Advanced class film fight scenes.
Märt Madison
Märt Madison started parkour training 2008. One of the founders of the NGO Eesti Parkour, where he organizes workshops and regular training.
Märt has his own media production company, where he combines movement and knowledge about film.
Teacher of the Parkour in Film class.
Laura Nõlvak
Certified NSFS teacher and an actress. Laura graduated from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre Drama School with qualifications in acting in 2002 and since then she has worked in Estonian Noorsoo theater . She has created over 90 different characters.
Laura will come on the second week of the workshop to help the students with the performance of their test fights.
Rein Oja
Inactive NSFS teacher, actor and a leader of Drama Theater, one of the biggest theaters in Estonia. One of the founders of the Estonian Stage Fight Society.
Rein will come to share his knowledge about katanas and how to transfer the katana techniques to the broadsword.
Hellar Bergmann
Hellar will teach the advanced students how to work with furniture in a fight scene.
REGISTRATION INFO
Early bird price (until 15.5) for underaged (not younger than 16), students, ESFS(ELL) or NSFS members is 750€, full price is 850€.
For those who register later than earlybird, the prices are accordingly 850€/950€.
For this you will receive classes from 9 AM to 6 PM, sauna and shower facilities, lunches during the training days and the accommodation in the shared sleeping spaces.
Registrate here: https://forms.gle/YtAf2NBpJ4ZjZ2iz9
Your registration will be complete only after paying the first half of the full prize of the workshop fee (according to what is relevant to you).
If you need a bill, fill out the last question in the registration form with necessary data and wait for the bill before paying!
Please make the payment to the account:
MTÜ Eesti Lavavõitluse Liit
Nisu 25-22, Tallinn 10317
Reg.kood 80315097
A/a(IBAN): EE641700017002894663 Nordea pank
In the description: SummerWorkshop2023 + Your full name
In case of the cancellation the workshop fee is refundable until 24th of June 2023, except 50€ that is non refundable. In case of the later cancellation the organizer will keep half of the workshop fee.
Group sizes are limited!
If after reading the NSFS levels info still not sure which group you belong to please contact lavavoitlus@gmail.com or call +372 515 0728, Kaire.
MAKE SURE YOU ARE HEALTHY BEFORE THE WORKSHOP.
ACCOMMODATION FOR STUDENTS
Students can stay in the lovely house of the Free Waldorf Kindergarten in Viljandi. https://goo.gl/maps/NTKo4DCYN7BUri5u8
There is a garden full of greenery around the house.
Sleeping places are on the floor in shared big rooms. There are single cotton mattresses for a soft landing. You need your own sleeping bag or bedding and pillows.
The house has a kitchenette, a toilet, a washing facility (however, we ask you to wash in the sports center if possible).
The accommodation is located 15 minutes’ walk from the training place.
If students do not want to share their accommodation with other students they are free to look their own accommodation on their own extra cost.
THE WORKSHOP IS LIVE!
SUMMER WORKSHOP
The Nordic Stage Fight Summer Workshop will be organized on 10.-23.7.2022.
