hope arrived on wednesday afternoon and, after a patio picnic of mystery meats and rose, we started moving in the living room. we let our bodies warm up through impro, moving however it felt best, often talking, sometimes just listening to the music. i chatted about my piece and the ideas behind it, rambling and letting a stream-of-thought fall out, and hope asked questions and challenged me on some of my approaches. it was so good to have a fresh opinion on things, and hope was suggesting ways to push the movement and challenge the choreography (and the choreographer...) that caused the piece to go in completely unexpected (and highly welcome) directions. the movement phrases shifted and grew, and by the end of our little session i had a whole new piece of material in front of me. there was something brilliant and simple about some of the things hope was saying. she pushed me to move the piece in space: something i had been subconsciously avoiding. i suppose with the knowledge that this will be performed in a closet, i've been restricting my movement to fairly small, gestural phrasing. but to create a better contrast between the film and the closet, and letting the piece grow and gain momentum, going bold will prove much more fruitful. i'm so stoked for this weekend when jasmine, henning and i go into the closet room and we can explore how the larger phrases have to be modified. the challenge of altering more grand and spacious phrasing will be so much more exciting and will hopefully create interesting concepts and ideas in the tiny performance space.
next we welcomed jasmine back to the house late thursday evening. we had a large "family" dinner and jasmine became acquainted with ben, daniel and hope. i taught jasmine three phrases of material: a floor phrase that developed from one of jasmine's impro tasks, the root phrase that the rest of the standing work was developed from, and the root phrase as it was developed to move in space when hope challenged me. we are ready for today, when i will take the piece to the next level in the closet.
hope and i went on a walking adventure in town, taking a lovely coffee break in the central square, and taking pictures of signs in the streets and swans on the canal. hope reignited my thrill of the city by reminding me, with her first-timer excitement, how beautiful, quaint and unique this city is. while we were out, jasmine picked henning up from the station and they were here to greet us when we returned. now we are six! i taught a yoga class, and we roped dan and henning in - first-time yogis who cursed me as i made them balance in side plank and rest in warrior II. and ready for the next surprise of the day? ... henning brought his slackline!! after yoga, henning slipped out into the field behind our house and strapped the line between two trees. when i came outside he happily playing, walking and jumping, on the line. i am in love with slacklining! (don't worry, i didn't know about it until recently either: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacklining.) henning gave me a tutorial, walking me through the first steps - just getting onto the line. he broke it down in a way that i could understand, cleverly relating what i had talked about in yoga to how i have to think and move on the line. we played around outside on the line, and toyed with some flips and tumbling on the grass.
meanwhile the brothers were busy at work painting the bedroom ... ooh it looks so good! and around 10pm we all sat down to a huge dinner and discussed plans for approaching the work we have to cover on the weekend. we have a lot of work to do, but with all this fresh energy and these new games, i think we'll be fine. it seems we're all in a really good place to work, create, explore, trade knowledge, and learn from each other.
← tea time / hope in town → 
our couch surfing painters at work on the bridge near our house
(dan in the foreground, ben on the right)
