mentos moment

today allison and merryn went on an adventure to the post office. being brilliant, they wrote down the directions and set out with their postcards and letters to family and lovers ...


... they look back & forth at each crosswalk, and make only one wrong turn. they find their path towards the center of town, looking for englestraat (or something to that effect), somewhat doubtful of their direction the whole way. when they find english-street, it looks really wrong - as though it would take them back home. just at the right moment, in the moment of need, the magical bus pulls up beside them at the cross light ...


brave allison goes up to the window and asks the gentleman driving the magic tour tram where the post office is. he points in the direction of downtown and then, after a moment's hesitation, invites them on board! they take a seat on the nice wooden benches - feeling much like they are in an old-fashioned cart. they had just been photographing the beautiful cart. mentos moment! they pull out their packs of mentos, allison offering the kind chauffeur one (which he graciously accepts, solidifying the mentos moment) and they sit back down across each other and grin ...


the kind man means well, and drops the girls off in front of the post office ... which had apparently closed down a couple days before. they ask a kind lady on the street, who sends them towards the university. they monkey bar from one person to the next, asking each where they might find a possibly non-existent post office in the area.
inside the university, they feel much like they've landed in oz: they are quite consipicuous, and pretend to be university students of architecture ... as they pass in awe by beautiful work rooms and spacious studios, and through high-tech electric double-doors where the two doors part in opposite directions. they receive their final piece to the puzzle from a lady at the information desk, and are directed five minutes down the university-town street, and into the tiniest of buildings along the street, in which TNT Post is located, along with a candy rack and an ING sign.

success!! the girls jump with joy after their long, nearly 2-hour trek, and get their letters and postcards mailed off. on a roll with asking directions, they step into the student center next to the tiny building and ask if there might be a simpler route home. the kind young lady inside draws up a google map, showing them they are nearly a directly straight line home. not ten minutes later, the girls are back in the poptahof ...

perhaps a preferred time frame to the 2-hour trek, but let's face it: nothing beats a mentos moment!

this picture needs no explanation.

crunch time

i'm starting to get a bit anxious about the passing of time here. we had forever! and now, even though we still have a week and a half, it feels like all the time is slipping through my fingers. yesterday we passed a beautiful afternoon on the canals & streets of amsterdam, letting allison adjust to the netherlands. hope disappears today, off to greet her husband when he arrives at the amsterdam airport (awww). so allison and i will have the full day to focus on beginning our process together: both her piece - in which we are each dancing - and my piece, for which i seek her advice. we are also sent on a mission today to distribute the flyers for the showing! what a perfect way to really get to know a city. i'm almost sad we weren't given the task sooner. so i'm afraid there's not much artistically to mention yet this morning. it is still dawn, after all... (i managed to wake up at 5:30 with a call to the restroom, and found myself too restless to fall back asleep.)

we did do a couple thirty-second photoshoot sessions yesterday. one happened in the closet, which was an interesting challenge for me. the task: use the movement i've created for my piece, and work it in the confines of the closet. hmm, well that's the exact task i had planned to give jasmine during our next rehearsal, since that's the next step in our process. let me tell you: i don't envy her. haha... it was not easy to take the material and try to move it. (considering you can't actually move in there.) this could prove to develop some really interesting material... or, perhaps, it will completely alter the piece. (which, don't get me wrong, would not be a terrible thing! after all, something i'm working on learning is how to throw out material; not being attached to one idea; being okay with saying something doesn't work)

as in good style, i'll wrap this up with some photos for your amusement. stay tuned as the adventures continue, next we begin to explore allison's piece of work. back like in the good ol' days, rehearsing with allison.


allison through the little door! and my favourite wonky building


love birds on a carriage ride
or take a ride on the "love boot"

closets, rabbits, & films

aren't they cute?!
the three others from the weekend: jasmine, hope, & henning.

beginning of my third week! it feels like i've lived here for a year already. jasmine and henning went off yesterday - backpacks, beer, pasta salad, guitar, slackline, and all - to return to groningen for the next five days. we had a good photoshoot and filming of my piece, version 1, in the closet room. it's so exciting to have henning on board, who is hungry to add his artistic input and offering interesting suggestions that fit so perfectly with my developing vision. but the blue room/closet room is a tight space, and leaves little room for the camera plus cameraman (slash choreographer) plus photographer (plus dancer and musician). i am considering making an artistic choice to film in there, however, because it's quite interesting to have moments when body parts are missing from the frame. i have to watch the video again and decide later. i also have to make some alterations to the choreography and smooth out some transitions. but that was to be expected, and i can have it all ready for when the duo returns from groningen and we do our final filming. (** check out hope's site for pics from our filming session in the blue room http://www.flickr.com/photos/hope_davis **)

we also made beautiful headway on jasmine's piece, filming version 1 with me and henning. the piece is really fun to explore: working out how to be a creaturesque human being, making my way out of bed & around the house in the morning, with a harmonica-playing man following me around as though it's all as natural as breathing.

yesterday at noon sharp liset and her husband, hank, arrived at our door with cameras, tripod, and our rabbit replicas (for us to take home while she keeps the originals that sit on our backs). the passage was closed (sunday) but the sky was keeping the rain at bay, so we decided to take the chance and shoot outside. jasmine and i used choreography from my blue room/closet piece, with an added improvisation, and henning played us a beautiful song he composed recently (that you can hear on his site!). it was a lovely afternoon and we danced in a neighbourhood park. you'll have to check hope's photos (again, on her site) and await the video and photographs from liset!

that'll be all for now, i think. allison arrives today, completing our trio of dance artists!! the full house continues to shift and change, and we adapt with it and with each new addition. i love making art! it's art-tastic.

above: a photograph of our photographer; henning working on his headshot

what henning saw

much news, many people

8 in the morning. a quiet morning, a cold morning. i've had to light candles in hopes that it will warm up the room. in the time since i last wrote, much has shifted and changed in our house. it is alive & buzzing with new people and many new ideas! oh it's all so exciting!!

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)

our latest guests

i moved inside from my nice morning on the back patio as the sky threatened, yet again, to downpour. it's been sunny then breezy then sunny then chilly, and it's got that feel of rain now. so i sit here, procrastinating on beginning my choreographic exploration for the day, and i thought - what better thing to do than make an entry! i should introduce our latest house guests!

two couch surfing graffiti artists from australia, ben and daniel, have joined us for three days. after already months on the road with camping gear on their backs, they're touring the better part of the netherlands to paint and explore. as i write, they're at the main graffiti wall - the bridge that separates our ghetto from downtown - and hopefully by this evening i'll have some photos to put up. we've also managed to convince them (it wasn't hard) to do something in our house. it's a medium jasmine and i don't dare try ... plus we like everyone who passes through to leave a little mark of their own.

14 july: impro task from jasmine

i watched the video of the work i did in jasmine's impro task for today. it had a different feel than my previous impros this week. i like the calm. i like the angle: shot from the floor, much of the back, not the face or any expression. i like the relationship between the camera and the dancer. there's less intrusion somehow - maybe in the simplicity. maybe the dancer is not trying to show off?

there is an aspect of the video that feels almost defeatist. interestingly this gives new light to my exploration of the hidden self versus the exposed self. rather than using the "hidden" as a larger, angrier, bigger, more forceful personality, while the "exposed shows a refined person, maybe the energies can be reversed. maybe the hidden person is the internal monologue, and the outgoing one has aspects of a put-on, larger-than-life being.

thanks for the task, jasmine!