groene thee met ginseng / a glimpse into my piece

jasmine left for groningen this afternoon. she'll be gone until thursday, which leaves me three full days of solitude (before hope joins me here) to work on the bulk of my choreography. jasmine and i have it scheduled that i show my piece to her and henning this saturday, so henning can work on the music for it and i can teach jasmine material. but, in honour of the work we've been doing, and in honour of the rain and the grossness of the rain outside, i decided to take a weekend day. it's actually my first day off since i got here. the day off will really relate only to dancing, since i will still work conceptually on my piece and maybe try to edit some of our videos to upload for your viewing.

i am attempting to create a work that involves three mediums: live music, live dancing, live video feed. (and perhaps pre-recorded video feed, but that isn't for sure yet... nor does it sound so good with the three others in the "live" theme...) i am using one of our spare bedrooms: the space nicknamed, quite appropriately & in honour of some improvisations jasmine and i did in there, the "closet room". the piece will explore social boundaries and reservations, our insecurities and social awkwardnesses. there are so many ways we sensor ourselves - bodies, language, phrasing, what parts of our personalities we deem appropriate to share and what aspects of ourselves we decide are unfit for social interactions. i will be looking at where the roots of these decisions are; when it is the individual who decides they should look and act a certain way, and when the media or our upbringing places these restrictions in our minds, affecting our habits and choices.

however, on a grey and rainy day like this, all i want to do is curl up by my [non-existent] fireplace and read a good [not that i have one] book and drink tea. well, i managed the tea part! today is just for groene thee met ginseng.

this one's for henning

we dedicate this one to henning.

(if you don't know him, he's the guy downstage right.)

jasmine's film, in the making

choreographing the scene in the kitchen

mosquitos and a new member!

we're getting eaten alive here. i wake up every morning with a new red, itchy splotch from a mosquito. this morning's lucky winner is my thumb! yesterday it was my earlobe and my eyelid. they know how to pick the awkward spots, eh?

the pressing matter at hand is jasmine leaving tomorrow for groningen. she will be away on the weekdays, to return each friday evening. with this time line, and having mapped out how many days we'll have together to shoot, we've been focusing on her film. i think we've made really good progress on the choreography. we are having fun improvising in the kitchen, and have choreographed the first half of the piece in the upstairs /on the staircase.

lastly in the news, we have a new addition to our house! from this wednesday until 25 july, hope davis will be joining us. she is a beautiful dancer and photographer i met while she was at the springboard project in montreal this summer, and we hit it off right away. i proposed that she join us to document some of our process (seeing as jasmine and i are not actually photographers - could you tell?) and we settled it in three emails back & forth. you'll find a link to her site at the bottom of the page.

and so ... from this sunday until wednesday, i will have the opportunity to work - just squashed a mosquito! - uninterrupted on my piece. solo time. you'll be hearing from me a lot then.

a few shots

my first sighting in delft

early morning recap

one bird outside our window had a rhythm going pre-5am this morning, and once it got in my head i couldn't shut it out. i dozed in the light for an hour or so, until i was bored with that. when i felt it was late enough that i wouldn't be putting myself back to bed by the time jasmine awoke, i got up trying not to disturb the sleeper on the other mattress, and came downstairs for tea. running low on tea ... we are going through it at such a pace we fear it might be unhealthy! you can't die from too much tea ... i keep telling jasmine there are worse addictions to have. jajaja

yesterday focused a lot on the beginnings of jasmine's film. her idea centers around co-existence and co-dependent relationships, and will feature a new character in our house, who will be visiting the weekend after next. may i introduce henning. a guitarist and harmonica player from frankfurt, germany! he will be playing the harmonica, and i will be the co-existing character. so yesterday we began with the beginnings of a day: getting out of bed. three impros later, one in the bedroom, one in the stairwell, and one in the kitchen, we had the base concept of the film. jasmine had mapped it out, and we filled in the blanks by trying out how to walk across the wall of the staircase, instead of taking the spiral stairs. or how to take a pair of sneakers off on the window ledge instead of conventionally untying the laces... or using one's hands...

two snapshots from our video-making!