Lightsaber lessons, you want? Virginia Beach martial arts studio seizes on Star Wars surge
By Kimberly Pierceall
The Virginian-Pilot
Jan 13, 2017
L. Todd Spencer | The Virginian-Pilot
Saber X training inside King Tiger Martial Arts in Virginia Beach teaches students how to duel using lightsabers. Photo taken Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017.
VIRGINIA BEACH
There’s no mention of Jedis or Sith Lords. No jokey attempt to tell these warrior students to “use the Force.”
And there’s certainly no reference to any “lightsabers” during the evening martial arts class where students wearing black belts reached for glowing weapons that “woosh’d” with every swing.
“We in no way shape or form want to step on Disney’s toes,” said Byron Kunold, or Master Kunold as he’s referred to at King Tiger Martial Arts at 3300 Holland Road in Virginia Beach.
That’s where he and the studio’s owner, Master Geoffrey Cielo, offer lessons they call “Saber X,” inspired by certain popular films about interstellar warfare.
The two pride themselves on maintaining a traditional martial arts curriculum using the sabers as a tool that could just as easily be a fencing sword, a kundo sword or a saber sword.
“We’re hiding it. We’re giving them their vegetables and they don’t know it,” Kunold said.
For now, the pair plan to offer classes to studio members for $3 to $10 each. King Tiger monthly memberships cost between $130 and $179. Saber X only memberships will cost $199 a month. They plan to offer at least three classes a week.
Students must bring their own lightsabers.
Why so careful about how they tread around the “Star Wars” terminology? Others, including groups in New York and California, have tried to launch their own “Jedi” academies only to face The Walt Disney Co., which bought LucasFilm for $4 billion in 2012, in federal court.
And as “Star Wars” has surged in popularity (again), so has the desire to wage combat with lightsabers.
Disneyland and Walt Disney World both offer official lightsaber Jedi training to “younglings.”
Minnesota-based Saber Legion describes itself as the Ultimate Fighting Championship of saber combat.
And martial arts studios have become regular customers of at least one maker of the the replica galactic weapons, UltraSabers.
“We have a ton of martial arts groups,” said Marlena Ficklen, a customer service representative with Texas-based UltraSabers. She said business at the 15-year-old company noticeably picked up about a year ago, around the time “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” was released.
Ficklen said she likes to see martial arts studios getting involved since the movements they teach are rooted in traditional combat:
“It’s more than just swinging a lightsaber around and choreography.”
She counted 73 customers with “martial arts” in their name – three in Virginia, including King Tiger, a studio in Elkton and another in Farmville called BattleGround Martial Arts.
Jeremiah Bunker, owner of BattleGround, said they offered lightsaber classes to children only during the summer but it’s actually drawn more interest from fellow martial arts studios, not necessarily would-be students.
“Our main focus is really practical self-defense,” he said. “It doesn’t go with the theme of the school.
“It’s really cool but the novelty wears off pretty quickly for an adult.”
Cielo and Kunold hope it doesn’t wear off for quite some time. The styles they plan to teach range from kendo and samurai to rapier and fencing, Spartan and freestyle parkour to Scottish claymore – each style getting about two months of focus before moving onto the next.
Eventually, the pair hopes to license its Saber X curriculum to other martial arts studios, incorporate more stunt work and open dedicated, standalone studios.
Cielo had thought about offering a sword-skills class before, but his bread and butter for more than 20 years has been taekwondo, hapkido and self-defense.
Cielo is a fan the original “Star Wars” trilogy, and was used to flimsy toy lightsabers. He was skeptical at first that using lightsabers in his studios would work.
But in October, Kunold showed Cielo the lightsabers he had bought for he and his 9-year-old son, Akin, and demonstrated it could take a beating – or a good Jedi-esque battle – and be fine.
“It doesn’t break,” he said, striking it on the ground. “At that point, I said I had to have one.”
When Kunold lit it up for the first time for Cielo, “I went ‘oooooohhhh.’ ”
Their classes begin and end with meditation and deep breathing, with black belt students resting on their knees, lightsabers by their sides.
Then it was time to pick up their “weapons.”
“These are, of course, light …” Cielo said, catching himself, “ultra … light … UltraSabers.”
Kunold, a former stuntman who worked on films such as “Alexander the Great” and “The Medallion” in Asia, led the way, slashing at the air with his glowing purple lightsaber as he inched across the studio repeating kendo moves, flanked on either side by students doing the same.
Then they paired up, practicing blocks and strikes, spinning as if dancing, with the sounds of a “woosh” or “bzzz” with each swing or hit. Next, they practiced the “Chinese flower,” a flourish done holding the saber with two hands or one, spinning it in front in a figure-eight pattern.
Cielo encouraged their saber-wielding to be done pinky first:
“Think to yourself that there’s actually a blade on the other side.”
Kimberly Pierceall, 757-550-1903,
kimberly.pierceall@pilotonline.com
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