CM-R

CM-R interprets Ronin's battle against the Yakuza boss in Avengers: Endgame.

It is the least blade-driven movement in the Extended Library. Attacks and parries are there, but the beats that decide the exchange are pulls, shoves, a retreat, a pose and a fall — actions written into the notation exactly as a 3P or a 12 would be. CM-R is where a Saberist learns that everything a scene needs can be written down, not only the swordplay.

CM-R was notated by Luis Meurice.

Notation

CM-R is written in two tables, read in order.

Wide tables

Both tables below are wide. On a phone, turn the device landscape; either table can also be scrolled sideways.

Part 1

Player	s1	s2	s3	s4	s5	s6	s7	s8	s9	s10
Saberist A	Blend 90 L	Lh Ig 11	Lh Ig P3	S+ (Pull right)	Step Back	Duck + Special	Flourish	3P	S+ Pull right
Saberist B	12		3X	Pull left	Shove	10©	Retreat + Pose	3X	Pull left	Down hard

Part 2

Player	s1	s2	s3	s4	s5	s6	s7	s8	s9
Saberist A	Special	Pose	Step back	12P	9P	Special + push back	Blend 180 L	Blend 180 L	12
Saberist B	retreat		6©	12B	9B	0	1©	0

Read down each column as usual. Count how many cells name something other than a target line — that is what this movement is about.

Lh is left handed and Ig is the inverted grip, both in the Notation Legend, and CM-R opens with them stacked: Lh Ig 11 is an 11 struck left-handed in an inverted grip, and Lh Ig P3 is the matching parry. The grip is the one taught in CM-J.
X is a lock, from CM-E, and S+ is the saber stand-off — the prolonged lock listed as S+S in the Notation Legend. Both stand-offs in this movement are written with what each Saberist does to break them: Pull right against Pull left.
Blends are written as turns here. CM-F writes a blend with the line it works on, Blend 1 Left. CM-R writes it with the angle the body travels through instead — Blend 90 L in Part 1, and Blend 180 L twice in Part 2, each one turning away from a thrust or a complete.
© is a complete, taught in CM-C; B is a bash and 0 is a thrust, as in CM-D. Saberist B's row carries all of them: 10©, 6©, 12B, 9B, 0, 1©, 0.
Special appears three times, in the sense CM-E gives it — the notation names the slot, and the Saberists performing it choose what fills it. Two of the three are attached to something else: Duck + Special and Special + push back.
Shove, Pose, Retreat + Pose, Flourish, Step Back and Down hard are beats in their own right. They occupy a step each, and the other Saberist is answering them.
A blank cell means nothing is written for that Saberist on that beat. They hold while the other acts.

Pulls, shoves and poses

A lock is a problem the notation has never had to solve. Two blades bind, both Saberists hold, and then — in every movement up to now — the sequence simply continues, because the next cell says what each Saberist does next and the bind is over by implication. CM-R stops taking that for granted. Both of its stand-offs are written with an instruction for getting out: S+ (Pull right) against Pull left, twice.

That pairing is worth reading carefully, because it is not a fight over the blades. The two Saberists pull in opposite directions, which means neither is trying to overpower the other and both are moving to a place they agreed on beforehand. A stand-off broken by force is a wrestling match with two lit blades in it. A stand-off broken by two people pulling apart on an agreed count looks, from the outside, exactly like the first thing and is nothing like it. Learning to write and rehearse the exit is the point.

The same principle runs through the rest of the movement. Shove at step 5 of Part 1 is Saberist B putting hands on Saberist A, and it works because Saberist A's cell says Step Back — the shove does not move anybody; the person being shoved moves. Special + push back in Part 2 is the same trade in the other direction. Down hard is Saberist B going to the ground on the last beat of Part 1, with nothing written for Saberist A, because a fall belongs entirely to the Saberist doing it.

Then there are the beats that are pure performance. Retreat + Pose at step 7 of Part 1, answered by Flourish. Pose again at step 2 of Part 2. These are two Saberists standing apart, doing nothing to each other, and the notation gives them a full step each. That is a deliberate choice by the notator and a good one: a filmed fight is mostly not contact, and a movement that only writes down the contact will always play faster and flatter than the scene it came from. The pose is where an audience is told what just happened mattered.

The blade work that remains is arranged around all of this rather than the other way round. Saberist A opens left-handed in an inverted grip — the least familiar way to hold a saber, chosen for the first two beats of the movement — and the exchange proper does not arrive until Part 2, where 12B and 9B meet 12P and 9P and two thrusts are answered by 180° blends. Even there, the blends are written as turns rather than lines, so what the notation is describing is a body moving through an angle, with the blade following it.

The last three beats show what the movement has been building. Blend 180 L twice, against a complete and then a thrust, and then Saberist A attacks 12 with nothing written in answer. After a movement spent pulling, shoving, retreating and posing, it ends on a plain attack that nobody replies to — and it lands as a conclusion precisely because everything before it was not.

Purpose

CM-R is designed to teach:

striking and parrying left-handed in an inverted grip
blends written as a turn through an angle rather than along a line
breaking a stand-off by pulling apart on an agreed count
shoves, pushes and retreats as written, rehearsed beats
staging a controlled fall
poses and flourishes as steps that carry a scene
placing Special slots inside a movement rather than only at its end

Training method

Phase 1: The inverted grip, left-handed

Saberist A works Lh Ig 11 and Lh Ig P3 with no partner.

This is the least natural position in the movement and it is the first thing in it. Strike the 11 line and take the 3 parry, left-handed, in the inverted grip, slowly and repeatedly, until both are controlled. Nothing else in CM-R should be attempted until they are.

Phase 2: The stand-offs and the pulls

Practise S+ with Pull right against Pull left, as an isolated pair of beats.

Enter the bind slowly, hold it, and then break it by pulling in opposite directions on an agreed count. Neither Saberist is trying to win the bind. Set the direction, the count and the distance each one travels, and rehearse it until the exit happens the same way every time — both stand-offs in the movement use it.

Phase 3: The shove, the push and the fall

Practise Shove against Step Back, Special + push back, and Down hard, one at a time.

For the shoves, agree exactly where the hands go and remember that the Saberist being shoved provides the movement. For the fall, work on a floor that has been checked, without a saber first, then holding one. This block is never brought up to performance speed.

Phase 4: Part 1 statically

Walk the ten steps of Part 1 one at a time, with a full stop after each.

Confirm at every step:

both Saberists agree which target the number names
the parry, blend or duck meets the attack cleanly
the pulls, shoves and the fall happen exactly as rehearsed in Phases 2 and 3
the step can be repeated the same way

Phase 5: Part 2 statically

Walk the nine steps of Part 2 the same way.

This is where most of the blade work lives — two bashes, two thrusts, a complete — and it is also where both 180° blends are. Take the blends as turns: the body leaves first and the blade follows, and the Saberist should finish each one facing where the sequence needs them to be.

Phase 6: The specials and the poses

Decide what each Special will be, and rehearse the poses at their full length.

Choose all three specials before practice, not during it, and keep them the same every repetition. Then hold Retreat + Pose and Pose for the count they will actually be performed at — the temptation is to rush them, and rushing them removes the reason they are written.

Phase 7: Continuous flow, then pace

Run each part end to end at low speed, then join them and add speed.

Speed belongs to the attacks, parries and blends. It does not belong to the stand-offs, the pulls, the shove, the fall or the poses, and CM-R reads better when the quiet beats are given more time rather than less.

Teaching note

CM-R should be taught as a language drill, not as a fight.

The hazards in this movement are almost all hand-to-hand rather than blade-to-blade, which makes them easy to underestimate. Two Saberists pull against each other twice, one shoves the other, one pushes back, and one goes to the ground hard — all while both are holding lit blades. Every one of those beats is rehearsed on its own, at walking speed, with the contact points agreed out loud, before it is ever run inside the sequence. A pair that would never speed up a lock will happily speed up a shove, and the shove is the one that puts a hand where a blade is about to be.

The opening carries its own warning. Left-handed work in an inverted grip is the least controlled way most Saberists can hold a saber, and CM-R asks for it in the first two beats, cold. It belongs in a warm-up long before it belongs in a run-through.

It is also worth naming what this movement does for the notation. A shove, a retreat, a pose and a fall are written in the same cells, on the same beats, as an 11 or a 3P. Nothing needed to be added to the language to record them, because the notation writes down what happens between two Saberists rather than what their blades do. CM-R is the clearest evidence in the library that choreography and swordplay are not the same subject.

When CM-R is clean, continue to CM-S, which builds a movement out of a shape, or return to the Extended Library.