Fencing Master Taking Talent to Hollywood Bowl

Ted Katzoff usually teaches fencing in one-on-one situations or in small groups.

As master-at-arms of the Salle Gascon Fencing Club and director of the Westside Fencing Club in Culver City, or as fencing instructor for Harvard and Oakwood schools in North Hollywood, Katzoff takes pride in his students’ achievements as individuals.

For example, he said that one of his students, Spense Thompson, a 15-year-old who attends Harvard School, won a national championship in the epee in the under-16 age group at this year’s Junior Olympics and was later his age group’s epee titlist at the Pacific Coast championships.

Another, Chris O’Laughlin, a 17-year-old graduate of Oakwood School, placed second in the epee in the U.S. Fencing Assn.’s national championships for competitors 19 and younger, Katzoff said. He added that O’Laughlin, expected to fence for the University of Pennsylvania as a freshman, also finished sixth with the same weapon in the men’s open division of the nationals.

For O’Laughlin to do that well among older, more experienced fencers was a “tremendous achievement,” Katzoff said.

If he is proud of what one or another of his students does, he may have good reason to be prouder of what 28 of them will achieve at the Hollywood Bowl’s biennial Beethoven Spectacular at 8:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

The 28 swordsmen, all members of Greater Los Angeles fencing clubs, will be thrusting and hacking at each other in a recreation of the Battle of Vittoria (June 21, 1813) while the Los Angeles Philharmonic and German guest conductor Claus Peter Flor play Beethoven’s “Wellington’s Victory.” In other works on the program, pianist Misha Dichter will be soloist for the “Emperor” Concerto and the orchestra will play Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.

The 28, divided about half and half, will be dressed in uniforms of the opposing armies of Wellington’s British command and of Napoleon’s forces under the command of the French emperor’s brother, Joseph Bonaparte, who had been installed as King of Spain by Napoleon, and Marshal Jean Baptiste Jourdan.

Katzoff has designed the battle sequence, which will be directed by Don Winton of the Mark Taper Forum. Katzoff and assistant Wayne Sitz will choreograph the swordplay of the armies, and they will be assisted by Jim Dalesandro, who is involved with partner Greg Michaels in teaching fencing, doing stunt work and choreographing such theatrical fights.

Dalesandro will coach 10 additional fencers, who will not be using swords but simulating a bayonet charge. As they did for the 1983 bowl performance of the “Battle Symphony,” Katzoff and Sitz will fight a solo duel with sabers.

Katzoff and Sitz fought alone in 1983, but this time, in addition to the swordsmen and the bayonet fighters, the pair will be assisted in battle by a group of supernumeraries that includes subalterns, drummer boys and flag and torch bearers.

The cast for the re-enactment of the battle, including 14 women, are all members of the following fencing clubs: Salle Gascon, Salle Borracho, Salle Mori, the Torrance Fencers Club and the Chatsworth Cougars.

Katzoff said he has worked on staging duels and other swordplay for many years, but never with so many people. This year, he said, he worked on a sword fight for a Los Angeles Opera Theater production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” at the Wiltern Theater and also oversaw a duel between two of the characters on the television soap opera, “Santa Barbara.”

He said that he once worked “with a large number of people” on fight scenes for a stage production of “Macbeth.” But he said that those sword fights took place “one at a time.”

The battle scene for the Beethoven piece, said Katzoff, will be “stylistically very different from modern competitive fencing. Mostly, it involves timing and the use of the body is different, though the strokes themselves are very similar to competitive saber and epee.

“But the cuts and thrusts are acting rather than fighting for a medal, so the speed is controlled and a little slower. And there is more muscular action to carry across the idea that the weapons are heavier and more dangerous than they actually are and that what we are doing is more dangerous than it actually is.”

He said that the weapons are real cavalry sabers, not the lighter modern version used in competitive fencing, and that they will be rented from a costume company. He said “every stroke is written in script fashion and memorized by the people performing. Physically, it will be done through proper technique. Even if an individual were to miss a stroke, he or she would keep on going and not get hurt because they have been trained to stop their blades at a particular spot.

“There is no free play for obvious reasons.”

Though most of the fencers are going into battle with Katzoff for the first time, some have fought with him before. He said that 10 of them were either musketeers or guards armed with rapiers for scenes for an international dance festival last year at The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

None, however, has yet made a saber dance.