Day 18: A day full of surprises..

Today was really interesting and had a lot of unexpected events occur. So I woke up this morning, surprisingly feeling extra refreshed. Emma and I had our breakfast, got ready and made it on the bus to DSA. As soon as we arrive, we come to the door of the gym to see that DSA is on lockdown. Apparently the doors were locked and the fire alarm was going off. So we waited for quite a long time, outside in the hot sun ( even though it was only 8:00 AM...the temperature was probably in its 80's or 90's already.) Eventually, come 8:30AM, the maintenance people came to open the doors.  The alarm had stopped making sound, but the lights were still flashing. We came in and still had our usual lengthy warmup sequence of rolling, crawling, walking, standing, plies, tendues, partnering lunges, and across the floor sequencing. What made this portion of class nice was that we progressed through the entire warmup rapidly and all through the usage of our bodies and communication through body language. The entire class was asked to stay silent until we got through the whole thing. I really appreciated these moments. It really was a beautiful experience. Communicating with everyone just through the sensation of our bodies, it's really powerful stuff. It was refreshing to not have to speak to communicate. I wish that we could take more people to be a part of this experience everyday. 


Then we went into African, which we spent a lot of time today performing the Kassa, ( The Hunting Dance from Guinea). We practiced a new warm-up and spent time refining movements from Kassa as well as adding a few new ones in and stringing them together. I learned about putting accents on our dancing to help inform the musicians today. Something that I am admitting of making the mistake of doing is to follow the beat of the wrong drummer. In order to stay on beat- obviously you need to keep with the beat of the bass drum, instead of going along with the other individuals. Also, I learned today that it is unacceptable to follow off of the drummer. The drummer is often looking at the dancers to inspire the rhythms and beats. Kathryn and I also figured out that the only types of dance we need in our life are the ABC's... African, Ballet, and Contemporary! Haha. But seriously, we started thinking about the ABC's of ADF and decided to make one. As soon as I have put it all together I will be posting it- hopefully with some pictures!


Then we got to partnering after a lovely lunch with Vincent and Shanna :) I love Ming! He is great. He spent a lot of time on my trio with Raphael and Rachel today. It was excellent. I found myself really investigating and learning more about how to negotiate with my partners and their bodies. I just want to have a mini- sized Ming to put in my pocket and keep with me for when I have partnering issues. He is so great! We also decided our group name would be "the Swag Shop"...it used to be called "the Sweat Shop" because we were so sweaty...so this is definitely a step up. A lot of people in my group actually wanted the name Swag Shop mainly so that Ming would have to say Swag Shop anytime he wanted us to do anything! How funny. 


Then after Repertory, Shamar was nice enough to drive us back and get out of the HOT Durham sun. So Emma and I did a few errands and got Snowballs again! Delicious! And only $2. After we spent time getting ready we went to the Tobacco Campus with Vincent and Sam and ate at Cuban Revolution again- mainly because Tyler's Taproom was full and had a 20 minute wait...and because Cuban Revolution is super cheap with $3 drafts. After dinner we walked over to the Hubbard Street Performance and got an unexpected show.


We started the show off with Quintett, choreographed by William Forsythe. I was super excited before the show started for this piece, and as it progressed I got continually frusterated with it. The song was extremly repetitive and annoying. There were also props on the stage that the dancers barely touched or manipulated. In my opinion, if you are going to have props/set work you either need to forget about it and not acknowledge it or really build it in your repertory of movement to manipulate or pretend to manipulate. They failed to do so...it was just "eh". The movement however as beautiful and flowed together when the quintett was partnered up. But as far as being a quintett it really didn't feel like a cohesive quintett to me...maybe it wasn't supposed to feel that way- but the title is misleading, as well as the added props. 


Then we moved into a completely different piece. It was absolutely gorgeous and made sense to me. It was called Little Mortal Jump by Alejandro Cerrudo. It was brilliant. They actually used four square box walls that spin and move around stage and blend in with the background. The dancers in this piece utilized them really efficiently and well. It was a very thoughtful piece. I also appreciated the progression of the piece and the flow from group section to duet, so on and so forth. I also felt a connection to the music. Each piece, each duet, each group section..the movement in my opinion matched the musical sensation- which is something that I really want to try and capture in my work...so I think they accomplished that well. 


The final piece was tricky for me as far as feelings about it. It was called "Too Beaucoup"  or ( too too much). It was a piece with movements repreenting a "robotic" feel with everyone dressed in white unitards with different gels of light and patterns shining down onto their unitards. It was such a smart lighting/costume choice. I felt like the piece felt underrehearsed and oftentimes was rushed, sloppy in the footwork/speed, and was not in synchronization. I think that also this piece was extremely long and needed to be cut off in one of the six times earlier that I thought the piece was done. Ending the performance on that note was disappointing to me, especially since I was SO stoked to see them. But in all honesty the show was a good one- regardless of some of the choices they chose that I do not agree with. 




Anyways, tomorrow is a long day so off to bed I go! Yay for Forsythe....!