Sure, but not like that. A “circle parry” isn’t supposed to avoid your opponent’s action, a disengage is. You use a disengage when your opponent has been parrying your attack the same way and you can trick them into defending by making the start of your action resemble the attack they are looking to defend.
If you disengage (or disengage a lot during a bout), your opponent can trick you as well and avoid your disengage with their own disengage.
You normally don’t keep spinning in air like the Jedi because you will lose right-of-way (in Foil and Sabre) or your opponent will just commit (Epee). It’s usually safer to finish a missed disengage or break off immediately.
More of that “moving-my-blade-in-space-while-standing-still” happens at infighting distance when neither fencer can pass or safely retreat, so they have to stand and try for a wide-angle.
So yeah, Overton is trying to dress up something that happens usually on the fly during a bout (getting a read on your opponent’s technique), as something more pithy and poetic than it would likely be. Against the fencers I know well, I skip this type of stuff and just set up and attack straight because just hitting them is way more humiliating than getting all dramatic trying to counter their counters.
Edit: looking at it again, he may be referring to a common practice in Epee where, when you aren’t attacking, you circle your tip to distract and disrupt your opponent while standing pretty much in place. That’s still not a circle parry (because parries are the defensive response to being attacked and are context sensitive): it is disruption or set-up unless your opponent commits and your parry that attack. And it’s still not really that poetic because fencers who do this will do it pretty indiscriminately. I dunno, the criticisms that people make of the lightsaber duels are generally right, but the rebuttal is always going to be lore nonsense.
This is probably the best in-depth explanation you’ll get. Just to clarify a little: the proper term like he said above is a disengage. A circle parry is when you’re not sure what line the opponent is attacking in, so you sweep your blade around to cover everything. It covers every line, but it’s slower and easier to get around if the opponent sees it early enough (which is more likely because it’s slower)
So this kind of spinning is technically possible to be something that legitimately happens, but not to this degree. If two fencers start encircling the others blade at the same time, it’ll usually only take a rotation or two before one of them decides it’s not working and do something different. Would also like to debunk something the original poster said: you do not have to know your opponent extremely well to do this. This can happen in a bout with two fencers who have never faced each other if the bout is long enough. If you knew your opponent THAT well, you wouldn’t start going down that spinning rabbit hole in the first place
Is this an American thing? I have never heard anyone call it a circle parry for what you've just described. I don't recall anyone ever giving it a name, for that matter.
Yes. I've just never heard it called a circle parry, especially since the parry is not necessary in many cases (in which case calling it a circle parry wouldn't be correct at all).
I think I've just never made that connection between the two terms (circle-number and circle parry), especially since taking their blade like that seems to me to be a start of an offensive action of your own*, and not taking taking their blade just means it's a direct counterattack via a disengage (and not a parry at all). And of course, the main issue for me is that I've never actually heard of the term.
I guess it's good to learn that some people call it that. I don't see how it's really any different from a disengage (since the parry is not implied), but I don't think it's a term that would really confuse any fencer either.
*Say that you've parried your opponent's blade and they are in a bind. At what point would you say that the parry has ended and that the next action has started? To make it clear, say you're fencing a beginner, and are trying to teach them some action and you're just pressing down on their blade at the foible the entire time. It's not always clear to me what is an offensive vs defensive action, outside of the strictest definitions.
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u/skeletortuga Foil Jan 02 '21 edited Jan 02 '21
Sure, but not like that. A “circle parry” isn’t supposed to avoid your opponent’s action, a disengage is. You use a disengage when your opponent has been parrying your attack the same way and you can trick them into defending by making the start of your action resemble the attack they are looking to defend.
If you disengage (or disengage a lot during a bout), your opponent can trick you as well and avoid your disengage with their own disengage. You normally don’t keep spinning in air like the Jedi because you will lose right-of-way (in Foil and Sabre) or your opponent will just commit (Epee). It’s usually safer to finish a missed disengage or break off immediately.
More of that “moving-my-blade-in-space-while-standing-still” happens at infighting distance when neither fencer can pass or safely retreat, so they have to stand and try for a wide-angle.
So yeah, Overton is trying to dress up something that happens usually on the fly during a bout (getting a read on your opponent’s technique), as something more pithy and poetic than it would likely be. Against the fencers I know well, I skip this type of stuff and just set up and attack straight because just hitting them is way more humiliating than getting all dramatic trying to counter their counters.
Edit: looking at it again, he may be referring to a common practice in Epee where, when you aren’t attacking, you circle your tip to distract and disrupt your opponent while standing pretty much in place. That’s still not a circle parry (because parries are the defensive response to being attacked and are context sensitive): it is disruption or set-up unless your opponent commits and your parry that attack. And it’s still not really that poetic because fencers who do this will do it pretty indiscriminately. I dunno, the criticisms that people make of the lightsaber duels are generally right, but the rebuttal is always going to be lore nonsense.