I can't remember anyone's name

This is a bit of a problem... It's not that I don't remember who you are, I just will have to ask what you're called about 5 times before I remember it. Thus is the price of meeting a ridiculous amount of people from all around the world in just 4 short weeks.


Just finishing up with week 3 now and it's the home stretch! I'll be home August 18th, one week on Tuesday, and the festival ends on Friday. Having been away for about 6 weeks now I'm feeling pretty excited to come to familiar territory soon. For now let us continue with this adventure!


Week three was a good one. I spent the entire week with Clara Furey and Peter Jasko in my second research project entitled, "A Dark Tale." The material we played with was mostly based on material they are using currently for a duet they are creating and performing together. Every day we started with around 40 mins of shaking... Yes non-stop shaking, which is actually an old Asian traditional exercise to aide with alignment issues, and as a meditation practice. We did this slightly different every day, but the idea was to activate our bodies physically, and activate the use of the mind in a particular way that enables openness and using imagination skills.

The rest of the days we went through a series of guided improvisations, either using a specific physicality, or by imagining a situation that we described as a "catastrophe." We left the word catastrophe open to include a wide variety of dramatic experiences. Sometimes we would get in groups and out of the improvisations create movement phrases we could repeat, and show the others. One thing that I really took from the work was how important the eyes and the face are. We can use the eyes in a way that we are imagining something that seems so real to us, and the audience watching can also see something that is not there. It was seriously amazing how this changed our physicality and intention, and I really felt how powerful you really can be as an interpreter when you use these techniques. At the end of the week we put a bunch of phrases together like a show, and performed them for each other. It was really nice to have something concrete to take away from this experience. Clara and Peter are also debuting their duet in Montreal this year so I think I'll be taking a trip to Montreal at some point soonish!

We also took a trip to the river in the middle of the week to decompress and boy was it beautiful. We went to a nude portion and had pizza and beer and felt good. The perfect day I would say.

Thursday night I saw Miguel Gutierrez's FUCKMEGUNTERBRUSBRUSGUNTERMEFUCK. This was performed in MUMOK and was epically beautiful. The majority of it was Miguel speaking about how he wanted to actually bring a piece he had already created, but ImPulsTanz couldn't fund it, so they asked him to bring a new performance... He gave a really good rant about how he hated the fact that there was no piece yet, but everyone was raving on about how excited they were for it because of the name and description he made up when he was pissed off one day. It was also about how shitty the industry can be with politics and how much you do work you don't want to do because you need the dime. He is based out of NYC so I think a trip is in order to see his real show also.

On Friday, we partied at the festival's lounge, which is a club open every single night of the festival! So a few friends went to party and I got home at 4AM... Good thing I didn't have workshops until 12:30PM the next day!

I woke up not hungover for some amazing reason and went to Jared Gradinger and Angela Schubot's "On Becoming" intensive. This experience was high up in the clouds somewhere. We did a lot of Kundalini yoga breathing exercises that got me really lightheaded after one full hour... The rest of the time yesterday and today we went through a series of abstract improvisations that made me question their usefulness, but in the end I enjoyed and had an experience with them that opened some new ways of training. I felt high most of the time, but that in itself was a very interesting way to dance, and it also did a good job of reviving me for another week of workshops.

On Saturday evening saw Philippe Gehmacher's my shapes, your words, their grey. This performance was in a museum with a beautiful set huge inflated shapes as the exhibit. He allowed the audience to walk around in the whole space as he danced in it, and spoke about the colour grey as he laid different sized, rectangular tiles down in a specific composition. In all it was a boring piece, but it was done very well and I took away some good things from it.

In the same evening, I saw Doris Uhlich at a club performance of Universal Dancer Club Version. I got lost for an hour and so was half an hour late, but luckily the show hadn't started until right when I got there. Talk about lucky! There was a huge crowd of people and the solo was based around this table with a motor underneath that made is shake and rock. It was absolutely amazing. Doris had techno music going as she moved the air with her body on top of the table that shook violently with lights in every direction. It was beautiful and fantastic and artistic and all things I love in theatre. I think I have found a new idol in Doris. After the performance, the bar transformed into a rave, and we all raved and danced really hard... Like really hard... I did go home fairly early (2AM) so I could be ok for the workshop the next day.

This coming week I'm taking three workshops starting at 9:30AM... I think this is going to take a toll, but it's the last run so better make the most!

Happy Travels,

G

Digging Deep

Its crunch time and it's the latter half of the festival.

LAST WEEK! So I worked with Bruno Caverna on Becoming Animal and Doris Uhlich on More Than Naked. Some pretty intense stuff.

Bruno himself is Brazilian and looks like a hippie. His ideas and the way they explain them can often be abstract and a little difficult to grasp, but then again so is art. Bruno teaches in an artistic way and I can really appreciate that in a word where everything has to be concrete. This class was fluid, and like water, we moved across the floor and in partners. The man point of the class I really felt was about play fighting. We learned certain ways to take someone to the floor using tipping points against someone's balance, but it was always in the spirit of play and love. It was as if in a relationship with your partner there was always this seductive showing of your weak side, but being fluid and clever enough to redirect the other's energy to use it against them if they came after you. It was very exciting to do partner work in that way because it could get rough and almost violent, but there was so much trust in each other's bodies that there was never danger and we could really feel the playful connection.

Arsenal Studio B before Becoming Animal

I was going to take Sybrig Dokter's Body in Question class, but the first class I went to felt unchallenging and not quite what I expected, so I decided to drop it and focus on the other classes.

Doris Uhlich's More Than Naked was certainly more than being naked, though that was a big element. We started the week by getting comfortable being completely nude in the class with techno/pop songs playing to get into a playful mood. As we were undressed and running around freely, we began to work on shaking our body parts and seeing where the party wants to go in our body. Shaking causing all kinds of jiggling, but with all kinds of pride. As a side note, this became very much about body love, no matter how much you jiggle. We ended up being comfortable with contact with others as we were naked since we spent 2.5 hrs naked together every day. On the final day we had a DJ come in, and we raved to techno music for a full hour nonstop... We used props in the studio, mirrors, danced like insane people, and felt like we took some serious ecstasy, but it was all natural baby. After that experience I could be naked anywhere.

On the weekend I took Axis Syllabus with Frey Faust! It was a little underwhelming, mostly because when I signed up it was an advanced class, and ten they changed it to an open class without me knowing. We did a lot of self research using some intricate anatomical information he gave us, and it was very interesting to find what momentum does to your body's structure naturally, but I wished for a little more than that in terms of physical work.

This week I have started my second research project, this time with Clara Furey and Peter Jasko! The work we have started is based on a piece they have together and we are working with the content of their repertory as our starting point of research for movement. The work is very imagery based in a  way, but that isn't always where we start in terms of movement initiation. We often do improvisations based on a few physical principals, and in the middle of that improvisation, images that happen are something to elaborate on and welcome into the work. It also has a lot to do with stage presence and what that has to do with the face and the eyes, which is something I love thinking about and would love to research more in my own independent work.

Justin petting cats

As a side note I have also been hanging out with some Canada friends! Justin DeLuna, Syreeta Hector, Erin Poole, and some new friends from Alberta! It's really nice to meet people from your home and make new connections that way that have a very big possibility for collaboration. In hanging with Justin we went to a cat café called Café Nero... There were 5 cats lounging while we drank allo vera juice. It was quite hilarious really, but all in all a cute and fun experience. While here a group of us North Americans have also discovered the love for Manner brand wafers. They are nutella wafers and good lord they are too good. Don't worry I will bring some home!

Anyway, sorry for posting late, I've been busy as you know. I will hopefully do some more partying this weekend and tell you all about some drunken adventures!

Happy Travels,

G