Akshually, there is armor in the lore.
(Probably) Bolted on after the fact but there is.

Fun fact: the OG Darth Vader vs Kenobi duel is legit. You can even name certain fencing moves. They engage, flip, flip, poke, and disengage before some lines of dialogue. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

It's kind of like how knife fights are portrayed as some intense dance where two fighters circle each other swiping and parrying, dancing around and scoring pretty slashes on arms and shoulders.

In reality it's usually just one guy gets inside the others striking radius and stabs the other guy in the gut/throat until he is too weak to fight back.

Doesn't make for good theater. West Side Story would have been, like, 20 minutes long if you got rid of the fight choreography and useless expository singing.

What a misleading documentary.

Force users have precognition with it roughly scaling with power and experience which tends to prolong fights on the more powerful end of things since they are basically fucking with each other to try to squeeze out an advantage. Given that the movies generally follow people towards the top of the skill and power spectrum we tend to only see those high end fights in action, on the lower ends or when power imbalance comes into play it basically devolves into what you described, but that mostly only appears in comics and books.

Also there are materials that can resist, block, or even disable lightsabers which I'll list in no particular order with their affects.

Songsteel: Lightsaber resistant.

Cortosis: As an allow it's resistant, in a pure form it shorts out lightsabers but is brittle.

Phrik: Lightsaber resistant.

Plasteel: Resistant to short glancing blows or in sufficient thickness.

Mandalorian Iron/Beskar: Highly resistant to lightsabers.

Certain Force abilities: There is a force ability called energy absobtion that can be used to just grab a lightsaber and drain it. Vader used a lesser form of it on cloud city to block Hans blaster bolts. Presumably there are other abilities that can do similar.

Fun fact the Jedi and Sith both once used armor that was lightsaber resistant and some lightsaber fighting styles formed specifically to deal with that. Also Anakin wore armor that was lightsaber resistant, I presume he stole it from somewhere.

doing foil-style fencing moves

Fighters should do virtually everything possible to stay outside the range of their opponent's blade

So I know what you are saying and you have a point.

But I find it funny as the modern olympic fencing boils down to "I stabbed you a split second before you stabbed me! I win!"

Honestly, that's why I think the original fight of Obi-Wan vs Vader was so good. They kind of fought like that.

So in defense of all this. I think the in-universe lore is that only Jedi and Sith can use lightsabers in this fashion, because the force prevents them from self injuring with a lightsaber.

So they end up with access to a more dangerous move set offensively than someone with a standard sword in our reality. Which also lends itself to different defensive capabilities and thus you get all this saber-fu shit.

Hell maybe there is an “aura” like component of the force and Jedi vs Sith battles have another layer of complextion. Basically these otherwise useless poses actually have an effect via the force itself.

Enabling the use of double light saber bullshit, and etc

I’m not saying it’s any less bullshit.

Ah, I see you too have been sucked into the hema YouTube rabbit hole. I would take self-described medieval martial arts experts opining on science fantasy with a grain of salt.

Like your reasoning is fine and the fights probably should be more fencing-like, but we also have to consider that Jedi are not normal beings. There's a lot going on invisibly in those fights, like how they're channeling the force into all their actions as well as experiencing a kind of prescience. So it begs the question, what does a fight look like with that kind of meta?

Grievous puts two of his arms back whenever he uses the other two to block.

The whole thing is just idiotic nonsense that looks flashy and has no substance.

But Disney is the epitomy of soulless evil and George Lucas could do no wrong according to the fandom.

Word of advice, just dont bother.

Think of the force like Jedis being able to anticipate movements and react ultra fast and it becomes less bullshit. If those fights played in slow-motion for normal humans, it would make sense that they could go on for longer without injury. Then a win happens with sensory overload or distractions - when a fighter misleads the other to believe an attack will be coming from where it won't actually come, they get a killing blow.

I would have expected some kenjutsu/kendo type attacks over purely thrusting though.

The light saber has the ability to be as good or better of a "slashing" weapon as a thrusting, despite the lack of curvature. It's closer to a long sword than a saber in the way it would be used in the absence of sci-fi handwaving, but with the whole vibe of the Jedi being monkish, that Lucas pretty much ignored eastern blade fighting entirely, and samurai shit in particular is kinda weird. Like, Chinese jian styles are closer to what would work with a blade of the same size and general shape, and is just as cinematic as what got used in the prequels.

But kenjutsu and iaido could make for seriously dramatic force mojo duels rather than expecting us to watch Yoda and Palpatine do acrobatics in complete opposition to their very centered and cerebral behavior in all other aspects.

It isn't even about realism to me, because it's just wizards with swords fantasy set in space, not hard sci-fi. But I really would have expected more control, more precision, more internal mastery of their weapons.

Yeah, but:

steven segal motions

The Force.