Dan's visit & Zollverein

All photos taken by Dan Rhatigan

Rio

Inspiration for the days to come!

Vienna day 8

Pictures from the Museum Quartier in Vienna, where I am still working.
Glorious weather does definitely make dancing every morning even more enjoyable.

And a thought

"I can't tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that art has often judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past has suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. I know too that the powerful fear art, whatever its form, when it does this, and that amongst the people such art sometimes runs like a rumour and a legend because it makes sense of what life's brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us, for it is inseparable from a justice at last. Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts and honour."
John Berger

Vienna day 4

Another gorgeous day in Vienna, sunny, fresh wind and so much time to wander about.
Hereunder just a couple of images experienced today.

New Brazilian El Dorado?

Foto: Thomas Milz

Off to Vienna

I will be teaching at the

Tanzquartier Wien

till March the 17th.
This will be the first serious test after my neck-back injury and the first dance classes I will teach since the beginning of June 06!
I am thrilled to be dancing again. These last 4 weeks I have been taking dance classes, at least once a week, and it felt wonderful.

Nina

An inspiring image from Nina Hagen's official interim webspace Nina Hagen

Retrospective

A good part of this holiday season has traditionally been devoted to thinking about 2006. What a year!
Looking back it has been a truly interesting year, with lots to be happy, proud, mad, sad, indignant and disgusted about.

I have learnt once again that my body and my mind have a tendency to, in periods of stress, not align themselves. When this happens in extreme fashion my body totally fails on me and it rebels and stops. This has been the case with my neck injury.
I am still taking baby steps towards a more harmonious and stress-free life style. I do hope that this injury, like the knee injury I had 16 years ago, will teach me how to create long-lasting, fundamental changes towards maintaining a qualitative higher existence. Even though the recovery is hard and slow, I actually welcome it, as I begin to feel I am able to take one day at a time, to work with realizable goals and to recover a somewhat vanished poise.

I do look forward to what 2007 has in store for me!

I am also thankfull for having had opportunities to work in and visit places I had never been to before. The trip to Istambul in late February offered my the chance to meet wonderful people who warmly took me by the hand and showed me way more than the usual touristic attractions of this ancient and fascinating city. The week in Istambul took me back to the time and place I began dancing in Brazil. So many similarities: The very low maintenance studio, the many young dancers craving for information and challenge, the miracle of improvisation, achieving the most out of virtually nothing, the total committment to dancing without the "ifs and buts" of an over-fed, non-chalante, decadent West Europe.

In this time I also got my driver's license in Holland, finally, after many years working on the trauma of a car accident I had when I was 19. This was a huge achievement of which I am really proud! I enjoy very much having the option of driving a car, and so does Andreas, as we now can share long-distance car trips.
I am also a happy owner of an old E190 Mercedes!

Then I was also for a week in Siberia, Krasnojarsk to be precise, where I was part of the jury for the Trans-Siberian Dance Festival and taught dance classes to literally all age groups, ranging from 10 to 60.
This was unbelievable!! I had never seen so much dance talent and committment in the same studio!
I watched over 70 performances. True that I thought most of it was choreographically very traditional and uninformed of recent choreographic thinking and development. However, the fact that those Russians from the White Sea, or from the Balkal or from way east, on the Japanese border were able to bring together their traditions and their knowledge of dance with so much integrity and belief did touch me deeply. Again, what is it that we miss in the West?
Getting to Siberia was an adventure itself into which I will not venture.
Siberia, a mix of its vast space and natural resources with the scars of so many years of communism made me think of Brazil and how lucky brazilians shoud feel for not having had to go through 50 years of a communistic regime.
I just wonder what it would be like to mix the brazilian and russian passions for dance. Can you imagine? Terrific!


Immediately after Russia i flew to Montreal to participate in the "Dancing the Virtual" conference, organized by Erin Manning and Brain Massumi. Despite the jetlag this was an enlightening event. I had been craving for a week in the company of extremely articulate, generous and research-oriented people. In Montreal I got in touch with my academic vein once again and a few bells began to ring.....
Besides, I met my old brazilin friend Cecilia, whom I had not seen for 10 years. what a joy!

A day after my arrival in Holland after Montreal Dance Unlimited Arnhem, the post-graduate course in choreography I head, was visited by a quality control assessment agency. (I must mention here that I worked towards this moment for nearly 3 years!!). After 2 days of talks, presentations etc... we got to hear that the commission needed more information to come down to an assessment. I was crushed!!!!!
Anyway, three weeks later I finally got the specifics of what they needed, worked with my team non-stop for a week and wrote the additional document they asked for.
A few more weeks later we heard we had passed with a good mark.
So now the agency's report is already at the ministry and we are waiting for the official verdic. This is all about Dance Unlimited Arnhem becoming a fully recognized and funded MA in choreography!!!
What a schizophrenic experience that was. On the one hand extremly proud for having pulled this together. On the other hand infinitely tired and desbelieving the system.
Quality controls like this one are increasing and the more one needs to prepare for them the less one is involded with the actual artistic work and research. What a drag! Maybe my contribution to this project approached its end???

At last the summer holidays began and I fled to Brazil, where I plunged for almost 2 months into the beauty and challenge of family life, the pride and shamelessness of brazilians and brazilian structures, the gaps between nature and culture and the power of speaking one's mother tongue.

Back in Europe, the last 4 months have been about finding a way to positively engage with my work in Arnhem, getting back on the dancing track, doing some needed and serious reevaluation of what dancing to me means on a personal level and sharpening my lenses so that I do not miss chances lurking in the world around me.

Look-alikes

Glenn, thanks for the tip!

http://www.myheritage.com

I am there

This is just a note to my beloved friends who have been worrying about my health and my being absent from blogging.
Life has not been easy, but my neck condition is steadily getting better and if I am luck I should be able to go back to some dancing by January.
This injury is a pretty serious one and I am after all not so young anymore, so, I must stay consequent and take as long as it takes till I can go back to normal. I am practicing Zen.

For some more tragi-comedy I recommend the film below.

New web site

I am beginning a new blog, dedicated to my artistic work.
Take a look!
Anangke

Diagnostic

The mystery has a name!
Degeneration of my C6 vertebra (arthrose in German) and a sliding of 2 discs, which press on the nerve causing it to swell.
I have the neck of a 50 year-old man.
Thanks to dolphin swimming, 20 years of throwing my head about and a great deal of stress in the last 2 years.

Later today I will visit the physiotherapist. I am curious to see how it will go, as I am changing from my long-term physiotherapist in Amsterdam.
Slowly but surely I shift away from NL.
I only hope the pain and the incessant tingling on the arm will go away so that I can sleep a full night of sleep.

C7 yet again

Between C7 and C8 lies a mystery I have been trying to unveil for the last 10 days or so.
It feels like having a third arm, or a phantom limb....always there, versatile and insistent in its nagging pain.
Tomorrow a MRT scan.