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

Explorations

What an eventful/uneventful week!

The first few days got off to a rough start. The jet lag hit me pretty hard because I was in bed for probably a full 24hrs after arriving with an awesome headache, a sinus infection, and intense fatigue. In 30degree heat on top of that, I just need to crawl into a hole for a while.

In order to stop feeling so lame I commanded myself to get outside, no matter how hot. So I went to discover my new neighbourhood. I found a health food store, a Hofer (grocery store), MANY cafes, the closest U-Bahn (underground) station, and the best way to get to the famous Danaukanal (Danube River). The neighbourhood is A. Beautiful and B. well connected so I feel pretty lucky to be here. After a few days of nothing in particular, I should probably get going on experiencing tourist life.

First was the Kunsthistorisches (Art History) Museum... Woah, That's a real museum. The building itself is across from the Naturhistoriches (Natural History) Museum and are almost identical buildings. They were both built around 1890 by Emperor Franz Joseph, the Art History Museum for the housing for emperors' and archdukes' personal art collections to be shown to the public.

As I walked through, I felt lucky that I could at least speak English if I didn't understand German because everything in the exhibits were written in both. I walked through the many rooms full of paintings dating back to as early as the 15th century and admired the immense detail and skill these artists have. It was also interesting for me to read how people analyse paintings and what people can get out of them; the process was very similar to how you can analyse dance and I felt very connected to the artists in that way.

Much of the museum was also dedicated to trinkets and valuable collections. I found it almost comical to walk through some of these rooms to find priceless statues and trinkets belonging to past royalty. Some of the items were understandably desirable: beautiful clocks, jewelry boxes, model ships etc. There was one item that just made me laugh at the expense someone paid to have this hilarious piece of art, Bear as a Hunter.



I'm fairly confident that there aren't many museums that can compare to this one.


Tuesday I decided Shönnbrunn Palace and estate gardens was my next destination. To say the least, this place is massive, so you will read that word frequently in this description. You first approach the gate that looks like something from the Never Ending Story and you enter the courtyard that leads up to the mansion. The courtyard is basically a football field and the palace has about 1500 rooms... I took a shortened audio tour of a few rooms to get a feel for the baroque style. Then I went to the gardens behind the palace... It must be multiple football fields in size because it's just massive. Included in the gardens is a labyrinth (which you pay extra to enter so I didn't bother), a massive fountain statue of the god Neptune and his entourage, and a massive hill behind the fountain leading to another monument. Yes, it was massive. Before I got to the hill, I got distracted by the entrance to the Vienna Zoo!

I felt conflicted about being in the zoo. I love that we get to see and learn and study them, but I'm not sure about if they should really be stuck in cages and then never be able to be released into the wild. I got over my internal moral battle though and walked among the animals. The zoo had basically everything including an awesome polar bear exhibit! The bears had become accustomed to the warm environment, but it seems like they preferred the cooler water they swam around much of the time. There was also a seal show where I got soaked by this guy jumping for fish.



That is where I met a fellow traveller who was from the States. He had a poor pronunciation of the word "danke" by my low standards, but he was cool to talk to.

When we parted ways, I decided to go to the Donau Zentrum and do some shopping. I treated myself to a few dresses from stores I didn't know, and then headed home for a much deserved cold shower.

Yesterday it thankfully rained. In the cool rainy weather it was the perfect day for revisiting Museums Quatrier and hitting up the Naturhistoriches Museum. While the building was as beautiful as the Kunsthistoriches, it was not highlighted because of the difference in subject. The best part was the dinosaurs! As a kid I really liked the idea of being a paleontologist, so I think that kid is still in me. There were incredible skeleton models, mechanical moving dinosaurs, real bones and fossils, a kids dream. They also had thousands of taxidermy animals on display, which I really enjoyed browsing around. There was also a great exhibit on human evolution. They have a great collection of skulls...



After I left, I grabbed some lunch in Museums Quartier, and then headed out to walk around the city aimlessly. I forgot my map that day so it was decently easy to get lost. It was really nice walking around the old cobblestone sidewalks and really taking in the city's character. Bakeries and cafes everywhere, beautiful fashion shops with fur coats worth thousands, and monuments and old buildings to admire everywhere. Every time I felt nervous about being lost, I walked onto a new street where there were plenty of cafes and streetcars, so I never felt too worried about it. I ended up stopping for a drink at The English Café! I had read about it online, and it was a pretty hippie with lots of books to read. Strange place, but really nice to have a beer and watch Wimbledon tennis on the big projector. Upon leaving I felt it time to find my way home. I found a street with streetcars and figured out where I needed to go pretty easily. I got home safely and relaxed for the rest of the evening.

The U-Bahn system is pretty intense, then when you add the S-Bahn and the streetcars and busses, it can be pretty complicated. I've been taking it one day at a time, and since I'm here for 5 more weeks I feel like I have that luxury. This is why I feel it was slightly uneventful also, because I've had a lot of down time and I enjoy that a lot. I do look forward to dancing and doing more festival related things. It feels a bit lonely sometimes when you don't know anyone and you don't speak the language, but I'm glad I've been able to go at my own pace. It will definitely pick up when ImPulsTanz starts.

Happy Travels,
G