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

Soreness

The weekend was wild...


First it started with a party Friday night. It was a huge ImPulsTanz opening party at the Kasino at Schwarzenbergplatz with a live band show, lots of drinks, and so many people. I obviously got lost first and found a different casino that told me where the even was. So then I found my way and saw the big obvious lights that spelled out IMPULSTANZ on the building... duh. The night was amazing. I had a few drinks and finally found Syreeta, a fabulous and lovely dancer who was in the Toronto Dance Theatre company while I was in school there. We caught up a bit, lost each other a few times at the party, but found each other again. I found a few other friends I met at ImPulsTanz and we decided to go to this other party hosted by Archie Burnett, my Waacking teacher that week! So we found the bar called Roxy and found a group of amped up dancers having so much fun, so we danced forever... Well, until 4AM. And even then the party was still raging when we left!



The street on which I got lost



Then the next day at 12:15PM I had Parkour... Maybe partying so hard the night before was not the best thing before such an intense class, but the workout for sure helped my hangover. Leech was our instructor and he had a really great approach to teaching it and about the philosophy around Parkour. He spoke about it as though you speak about life. The choices you make in Parkour are the same as life in the sense of how you calculate risks in your head. In life when you think about achieving something, most of the time one would say that the risks are worth the outcome, so take the chance. In Parkour, if you feel like you are feeling afraid of doing something you have in your mind, as long as you trust your body enough, you should take those risks. The downside of Parkour is blisters... My hands hate me now, but it's okay because I really do feel like I have a better sense of my fear and when it makes sense and when I should let it go. All in all it was a great experience. My body is so sore going into this week. We were walking on railings, running up walls, in the playground being monkeys, just experimenting and playing around.

Sunday night I also saw a performance at MUMOK (contemporary art museum) by Ana Rita Teodoro called Gut's Dream. It was a very beautiful solo with paper bags that extended and came apart. However, it was only 30 minutes long so I felt there was more to be said, or something missing. It felt like only part of something, rather than something shown by itself. After that I got some delicious Froyo and went home.

I saw this guy on the way home in the subway

Today I started my weekday workshops. First I have Becoming Animal with Bruno Caverna, A Body In Question with Sybrig Dokter, and More Than Naked with Doris Uhlich.

Bruno's class was all about play fighting and feeing as though you are a young animal learning to fight with your brother. So the entire time you know you are safe, because you are still soft with each other, you are purely learning. Sybrig is exploring relating to identity and minorities and finding where your can fit into the equation. It's a softer class physically, but very nice to think about. Especially after having Pilippe Riera's project last week I feel very in the political space of the injustice towards minorities. Then finally Doris' class is, yes, you guessed it, all about nudity! We were very well introduced to the aspect of getting naked as a group and dancing without worry of jiggling, in fact embracing the jiggles! It was a fantastic dance party and we all were very naked and sweaty, but happy and immersed in the infectious music and beat. I'm very excited for what is to come.

I will have it all in dirty details for you next week!

Happy Travels,

G

Waacking and History of Violence

Alright I'm noticing a trend... One where I'm not making my own deadlines. Therefore, I'm making the executive decision to cut it down to one post a week on Sundays or Mondays. It's a little difficult to maintain a constant flow of information whilst in the middle of a REALLY intense dance process.


Back to the good stuff! This week was fabulous! It was the first real week of dancing and it started with Philippe Riera's research project on history and Violence. Also, I forgot I scheduled another class this week called Waacking with Archie Burnett! So I had that too. My day was mostly spent at Dance Arts from 10AM-4PM with Philippe Riera, then I walked to the Arsenal and  had Waacking from 4:20PM-6:05PM. So my days were full this week.

Philippe's project was formatted loosely, and basically we were doing a lot of movement and dance research in the context of violence and how we create violence onstage without being literal necessarily. He gave us a lot of exercises in the form of an improvisation score that could lead us to honest and real reactions. At the beginning of the week these exercises gave us a lot to work with since improvised work is always different, especially with unfamiliar people. We soon had a conversation about how our honest reactions don't really tend to go in a violent direction. So we kept a lot of the exercises, but any decisions we made should have reference to a certain way of violence, create clashing concepts, or address touchy subjects such as politics, religion, sex, etc. This lead the project in a very personal direction where we could have pretty intense conversation about these touchy subjects we wanted the work to address. It ended abruptly and felt too short to really dive into some of the harshness and extremities that can occur in violent art. Otherwise, it was an excellent time and I really enjoyed working with a group of professionals with so much information behind them. It made the work very full and fulfilling, and I'm happy to have several new friends from many corners of the world!

Now onto something completely different! Waacking is a branch off of urban styles that comes from Hollywood. It is paired with disco music mostly and the movement is based on old movie stars and imitating some of there luxurious poses, while also incorporating a specific set of arm movements that look like your holding a whip and whacking your arms around. It is similar to Voguing, which is usually paired with house music and was primarily created by black, gay communities in NYC imitating models in fashion magazines. I had little knowledge of the technique before the workshop, but had seen it done before and learned a few moves. This workshop really allowed me to come by it honestly. I've never been one to admire glamorous movie stars, but the way Archie spoke about it and allowed for lots of individuality, it really start to make sense in my body. These techniques are also not choreography techniques. They have short movements that are part of the movement vocabulary, then you improvise within that structure and elaborate using your own flavour. What an excellent workshop.

So the Arsenal is the main building for the workshops, and the studios themselves are wildly huge... It's basically a massive warehouse that is converted into a few huge rooms with sound systems and dance floor laid out. One side of each studio is all windows too, so you get a fantastic sense of freedom inside these stage sized studios. But outside, wow. There is a small pool set up for dancer's use, a café with outdoor seating and pillows, a hangout where you can play foosball, and a bike shop for all the bicycles that are available through the festival. This is truly dancer's paradise.

This weekend I will be at the Arsenal for a Parkour intensive for 5 hrs/day... I will definitely abuse that pool. Next week I will also be at the Arsenal with 3 more workshops to talk about!

I also saw 2 more performances this week. The first, a solo by Saskia Holbling at Schauspielhaus. It was ok... There were several props onstage including a strange looking mummy/puppet. There was a lot for potential it to work, but I couldn't quite follow so it left me stale. The second was Serapions Ensemble at Odeon. It was too long, and too hot. The set was very interesting, and the performers were very talented, but it was too theatrical and overacted. There were many moments that lasted waaaaaaay too long and this lead to the show being almost 2hrs loooooooong... I have plenty of other shows to see so there will be many more chances to see spectacular work. Tonight I will be a party for the festival so I'll have a drink for all my Canadian favorites at home!

Happy Travels,

G

Opening Performances

Sooooooooo I forgot to post yesterday... My bad. BUT here is the lowdown on ImPulsTanz thus far!


Tuesday was awesome because of the amazing performance Doris Uhlich and her dancers gave at the opening event of the festival. It was in the middle of Museums Quartier with a massive stage and people crowding everywhere just to get a good view of this show. It was truly incredible to see so many people out to support this strange and beautiful art. Doris Uhlich is a choreographer and a DJ, so she's pretty awesome. Starting her piece off with "Doing It Right" by Daft Punk was a solid intro for the piece we were about to see. Her dancers entered the stage at the beginning clothed, and exited at the end completely nude. In the middle there was a lot of stripping, bodies jiggling, running around, sweating, baby powder in the air, more jiggling, and eventually champagne showers. And to Doris' selection of music, it was epically enjoyable for everyone. It was a perfect beginning for me in particular because I needed to see that empowerment the dancers had.

Wednesday I decided to take out a city bike and go for a ride along the Donaukanal. The weather had cooled down to a normal temperature so it was comfortable and enjoyable.

Yesterday was busier than normal. I decided to go get my workshop pass from the workshop office, which I read was in Museums Quartier. So I went there and found an ImPulsTanz office, only to find out the place to get my passes had moved from that spot and it was a good distance away where most of the classes actually take place. So I went there and found the office, got my pass, and also looked into the studios... Holy lord they are massive and amazing and I cannot wait to get in there and start moving. It was unlike any other studio I've ever been in and I feel so lucky to experience that.

That evening was also the first of the [8:TENSION] series performances. This series showcases upcoming artists and some of their experimental work. The first was by Maarten Seghers. In my humble opinion it was more performance art than dance, but it was a strange and funny performance that I still enjoyed. He spent a good portion of the show talking about horseradish and trying to get the audience to cheer "horseradish", and it was a great example of how you can harp on something and eventually get people on board with you.


Another great part of the night was actually making friends! Feeling lonely sucks, so I met these people doing the ATLAS program in the festival where you get to have a mentor and create something during the month here. Felt very grateful to finally know some people before going into the classes.

And that all takes us to today, which started off lame because as I was going to get groceries, I was J walking and tripped and wiped out on the road... I scrambled to get up and still went to get groceries, but I tore up my knee pretty nicely. So now my next trip is to the drug store...


Happy Travels,
G