Sooooooooo it's been a while... My bad.
Quick summary of my last week in Vienna:
To start I had three classes. First was Francesco Scavetta's A Surprised Body. Francesco is a tall, bald, Italian man with a soft voice and a very physical way of teaching. The class involved a lot of floor work requiring a soft body. It involved a lot of emptying of the body and using external support. It was honestly very challenging for me to keep all the sensations he was asking for. Sensationally it was challenging and beautiful work.
Next class was Alice Chauchat's Confusing Agency. This involved a lot of thinking. The majority of this class included improvisation scores to provoke observation and conversation. The scores often included the impossible, so it would highlight the struggle of negotiation. For me it enabled "noodling" in the sense that I moved with not too much motivation and the movement allowed more work to be done in my mind. However, it felt less purposeful and I felt as though I wasn't paying attention to myself, but to these thoughts that seemed removed from dance in a sense. It wasn't my favorite.
Finally I had Eleanor Bauer's Dancing, Not The Dancer. This was also an improvisation based class, but Eleanor's energy just too it to a different level. The initial rules were 1) Say yes to the movement before you can name it 2) Complete it with your everything 3) Observe. These rules gave us bombastic movement at first, but after a few times, we could find more subtlety and enjoy doing less and know how to complete that as well. It really felt like I had a purpose and everything I wanted to do was impulsive, but completed to the fullest. Loved it.
After the festival came to an end, we partied one more time at the Festival Lounge and then on Saturday morning... BUDAPEST!!!!!
Yes, queue singing of the song "Budapest." Spontaneously I decided to tag along on a trip to Hungary with a few friends I met from Alberta! It was both excellent and too short. We did a two hour walking tour, took a train over to a beautiful traditional bath house, and then we made it back to our hostel in time for an awesome pub crawl!
So we got shots at every bar and partied hard, met some other cool tourists and made it back to pass out. The next day me and Raine spent the day hungover, since we all got trains at different times, and then I caught my train back to Vienna. Then I flew back home on the Tuesday and her we are!
Since my trip it has been a little weird and difficult not being completely immersed in newness, and I'm not as busy as I would like, but I will for sure be doing my next adventure ASAP.
G
