Seni Exhibition 2002
The Seni exhibition is an annual show of martial arts which is held at the Birmingham N.E.C. The Kuk Sool Won demo team has been performing there since it started in 1999. This year, as the U.K. demonstration coordinator, the job was down to SBN Martin Ducker to organise the display, so he took along a group of his own students from Lowestoft and Halesworth (the whole Ducker family, KSN's Kris French, Robert Poll, Joanne Walker, David Ellis and JKN Nigel Gosling) as well as students from Norwich, Birmingham, Lakenheath and Kings Lynn.
The Seni exhibition is a two day event where you can go to see displays by just about any martial art you can think of. Also, there were numerous amounts of stalls selling a huge range of equipment and weapons as well as clothing and health products. We had our own stall offering information about Kuk Sool Won which was run by PSBN David Johnson (from Leicester). There was an arm wrestling competition going on and also a fitness test, both of which anyone could enter. SBN Darren Hart (from Lakenheath) was the winner of the fitness competition which was quite an impressive achievement, as he had to beat quite a few other martial artists as well as a Marine! Well he is, after all, a professional “fit guy”!
The demo team, which was led by KJN John Ives, performed four demonstrations on the Saturday and three on the Sunday. The display included demonstrations of forms, techniques (ki bon bon and ki bon soo), ladies self-defence, fan techniques, the five weapons of Kuk Sool Won, breaking, staff sparring, palm techniques, pre-arranged sparring (keun dae ryuhn) and a breathtaking display of breakfalls and acrobatics as seen in June at the Masters Exhibition. There were two raised platform “stages” upon which we performed, and all four sides were surrounded by hundreds of people, the majority of whom were martial artists or in the martial arts business, so as you can imagine, it was quite a nerve-wracking experience! But everyone performed brilliantly and we had a fantastic reaction from the crowd with everyone clapping and cheering and wanting to know more about Kuk Sool Won.
There were a few minor celebrities there including Cynthia Rothrock (who, unfortunately, didn't perform) and Rhino from Gladiators.
All in all, it was a very enjoyable experience and a definite must for anyone who's involved in martial arts or interested in martial arts in the U.K.