Women Martial Artists and Super-Movie-Moves
By Ms. Marian Schwartz

At the risk of appearing to be a name-dropper, I was present at an exhibition at which Kelley Westoby and her students did a dramatic, high-energy demonstration including choreographed fight and self-defense sequences, board breaks and short synchronized pattern segments, all to hot music with a driving beat. (Panther Productions features Ms. Westoby’s technical lessons on video, in case you are still saying, "Kelley Who?")

Anyway, at the end of the demo she spoke briefly to the audience of old and young community members spending an afternoon at the Fair. The subject of her exhortation was that gals can do martial arts AND be feminine, both of which she was an excellent example. She was young, trim, beautiful, had perfect hair that flew in dramatic swirls at precisely executed jump spin heel kicks and fell TV-commercial-like every time in its assigned place at the sticking of her stance, was photogenic, had a perky personality and had trained for the Olympics. And she had perfect hair. Of course her demonstration was designed to highlight all these, her most positive qualities.

But what of the rest of us? What if our main exercise prior to marital arts was running amok in training for the Mom Triathlon? This series of linked events consists of juggling multiple agenda, the instantaneous dash to be in five places at once, and the background drone of endlessly supplying clean laundry, meals, valve oil and reeds. Locations for the insta-dash increase in distance from one another as you progress from prelims to semi-finals. The endless supply event is spiked by emergency runs to the parts store, or a forgotten baseball glove that is needed NOW before the bus leaves for the game in another county.

While this event takes skill and concentration, is aerobic in nature and of vital interest to those engaged in its perfection and performance, it is hardly the stuff that the great action scenes of movies are made of. Therefore let us isolate a few individual technical exertions that have possibilities for visual excitement.

Consider the 3-month-old, heretofore content to lay in a relatively stationary attitude, happily gurgling his delight at life in the middle of the bed. Behold! He makes a mighty lurch, rolls over, and finds that he is looking at life from a different perspective. Another lurch and again the world changes! This is great! Another push and his position, now on the edge of the bed, changes to another new sensation as gravity exerts its force. Mom is taken by surprise.

Here is where the action goes to slow-mo. The Mom-martial artist exhibits a perfect dive-catch-and roll from across the room. The action is caught at several different camera angles. Baby is caught in gentle arms and hugged to safety. The sequence ends as mom rolls to one knee and catches a breath. Auxiliary action! Close-up of 18-month-old about to chomp new teeth into cat’s tail. Mom up, still holding baby, free hand snatches teething biscuit from box, tears away wrapping with teeth, deftly switches tail for biscuit just as toddler’s teeth close. Cat scampers away to kitchen table where teenager is lounging with headphones on in front of a comic book. In continuing motion mom does wire-work cartwheel across the floor, depositing baby in swing, coming up with algebra book, which replaces comic book on the table. Headphones are whipped away as she lands upright, hands on hips, in "in-charge" stance.

This is all great acrobatics, but where does the actual martial part come into play for the non-movie gal artist? As in the case of two young ladies whose fathers were TKD instructors, training came in handy.

A teenager had been repeatedly harassed by unwelcome aggressions of the most inappropriate kind by a fellow student. One day when he grabbed her from behind she responded with a backwards elbow strike to the nose of her attacker. She was not bothered again.

On another occasion, a ten-year-old black belt was tired of putting up with annoying physical attentions of a classmate and did a flying side-kick off a picnic table into the offending party’s gut. They were friends after that.

While these short scenes don’t have the epic climax scope to them, they are effective in defining character.

Most of us just don’t have opportunity to use our martial arts in threatening situations because our lifestyles keep us away from places where trouble which might be handled by physical defense or deterring attack is a normal part of circumstances. We go to work, to church, to the grocery store and baby sit the grandchildren. You can hardly get more sedate than that.

Once in awhile even the most boring of lives finds itself someplace unexpected and thrills to the exhilaration that "hey! This stuff works!"

My son Hoss decided to try out his geetar-playing and song-singing skills in a cowboy saloon and invited me to come and watch. Always ready to be part of the cheering section for my kids I found myself in "Trout’s" in Oildale one night. I was enjoying conversation with my son at a table and politely declined a stranger’s invitation to dance. The persistent man repeatedly grabbed my forearm, and without thought, or turning my attention away from Hoss, one after another I rolled my hand over to knife edge to push his hand away. He seemed to be unaware that he was not making progress in seizing my arm and after about 5 easy breaks of this kind I turned a little more leverage toward him and pushed a bit harder. He rocked back on his cowboy boots and blinked. Yes, he was a bit tipsy. Hoss got up to steady him so he wouldn’t fall, and whispered confidentially "My mom’s a black belt". The man tipped his cowboy hat, said "No offense, Ma’am" and departed. Yes!

The marvelous moves of the average confident lady martial artist have great scene possibilities no matter where they are exhibited, camera or no.