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