MONTREAL, Authentic improvisation, Sept 2012

The end of my American Visa has been a gift, coming back to Montréal!!!
I was determined to enjoy 100% my time there!
I was really interested to make a video project of Authentic Movement.
The day after I arrived, Audréane (she participated to Presence & Absence performance in July) bring me in an amazing abandonned Factory called by the graffiti artists "TA" in Lionel Groux area.

Using the Authentic Movement, as a tool of inspiration of movement, we recorded with a Go Pro camera. Audreane and her camera was witnessing... The result has been very interesting... (video by Audreane: https://vimeo.com/78671022 )

Completly captivated by the place, and curious to go in a more raw and simple Authentic Movement video experimentation. I proposed to June Barry (other film maker friend mine) to work on it, and intrigued she accept.

We went to the TA building. It has been a strong experience for me. Closed eyes, 30 minutes, alowing my body to be moved by inner images, deep stimulus, emotions. Space in bewteen. Freedom. June was witnessing, holding the space and letting my movement coming in her body and her camera...
I edit a video of all the session and she is working in an artistic video. She did a first small video "Accodemt" of it.

Audréane was involved in a project in the TA building initiated by a artists group called "les aiguilles tournent à l'envers". They planned to record a short film in the TA. During the preparation of the installation (an amazing graffiti spray' pillar), we were "waiting" and an amazing improvisation performance happened! Magic... Adrian (my cello player friend), Renaud (a saxophone player) and Jean Simon (an accordion player) were playing and I couldn't help dancing...

 




Here: the videos souvenir of this magic moment of meeting:
http://vimeo.com/51845247#
http://loftdowdcreation.tumblr.com/ateliersinopines
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BoHSaAsxRKk#at=30






I have a very nice connection with Renaud and his saxo so we meet some days after in the Plateau Mont-royal. He has a nice surprise for me, he proposed to play with the street piano. In deed, the city launched the initiative "Piano des villes, piano des champs", based on the "play me, I'm yours" concept. I loved the idea to improvise with him and with an unknown pianist and in the street!




A very nice way to say good bye to my lovely Montréal...

Ah small, anecdote: Adrian, the cello player, was then playing during some CI jam... Inter-connections, I love you!

Now, let's take the train to New York!!

BOSTON, NORTHAMPTON, End Aug Sept

Boston, such nice surprise. I din't know anything about this city. Walking around have been so great. Discovering the "passing time" through the amazing buildings (from the 18th century to today). Many parks, many artists in the street, is it the more relax New York? Again a litle voice told me, mmmh perhpas you can stay here...

 

Amazing surprise, when I recognized the sound of the Hurdy Gurdy in the corner of the old state house, of course I stop there to dance!!! Donald Heller is a real street artist... I came back other time to discuss and dance with him and his doc Makie!

 I have been quiet inspired by Boston and spend 2 days to dance in the street. I remember  one afternoon, where I decide to dance in a round square ate the bottom of a Hospital in the Center. Many people were sitting there. Almonst people from the Hospital. Kind of heavy atmosphere. I start to move discretly from a bench and litle by litle expanding in all the square. Sprinding around me my joy. At the begining, the people was watching me discretly and perplexed. But then they start to react very positively, giving me more joy with their generous smiles! Some guys didn't understand when I refused money... "so why do you dance here if you don't need money??", "because I am free to dance everywhere! And my body wanted to move right here and now...".

At this moment of my trip, I really need to have some break... and to meditate about my summer experperience... I dance a litle: one afternoon, with my angel Neige (link to the video of our impro).

And also I went to a score organized by Oliver Besson in the Boston Conservatory. Such a nice group! and amazing sounds-mucic improviser Taki Masuko.

Here you have all the informations about Contact improvisation in Boston. 

Olivier kindly invite me to his place, in Belmont (presence of the nature and quiet-silent place), to have my time of meditation and writing... We share some interesting discussion. One very interesting subject for me at his moment was the emptiness, the silence and the stilness... He reveal me the japonese MA concept (negative space).
I also share with him my interest in the Linguistic. I am French speaker but all my dance, somatic training and communities are in English or Spanish languages.
In Morocco, it will be a very interesting work for me to find the French and Arabic interpretation (yes further than simple translation!) of all these concepts... Like it! I have been always playing to compare the languages I spoke.
A good one I found with Olivier: in French "Stillness" is "Immobilité". Here I am more "agree" with the English word, because in French it implies that the "Immobilité" is the opposite of "mobilité", which is not true. The Stillness in not the non-mobility as the silence is not the non-sound...

From Boston,  I went to Main with Brando. He was participating to an amazing training with Tom Myers of Structural Integration.

I was already in a phase of investigation on the Fascia layers in Contact improvisation but being with this people all a week have been so instructive.
During the day I was with my writing tasks and enjoing the beautiful and rich nature of Maine (I discover so many animals that I ever seen before...). And the city is for me really representative of my fantasy images I had of USA...

 

And during the evening sharing time with the training participants (yoga teacher, ostheopath, body worker...), they were so enthusiam, it has been so good to listening and trying to understand some staff inside this"chineese anatomic vocabulary"... I really liked the IS approach (fascia layer and tensegrity concept) and starting wtih buying his book (in Spanish). I think that it can be also a good support for me for dance improvisation workshop I would like to give in the future...

One evening, Brando and I offered to the training participants (and also to Tom Myers, who loves CI) a workshop of Contact improvisation called "the long camino", moving trough the layers... above skin, skin, fat beneath skin, fascia profundis, muscle, periosteum, and bones.

From Maine, I go with Brando to Northampton. Discovering the famous Northampton, so many people I met and love from Earthdance and Dance Camp are living there!
There, I have been dancing almonst everyday! Jams in Northampton or in Earthdance (which is quiet close), and also CI lab with Brando
Of course I participate to the VIDAM jam, amazing space in the Earth of Northampton, live music (with high level musicians: Mike Vargas, Bob Weiner, Stephen Katz and my dear friends John Hughes and Moti Mark Zemelman). Very high quality jam, the group is an old group with new people but there quality is that you feel a very deep listening of the space, of the group, of the partner and themselves. I love them! all of them, I feel like at home with them!
I also went to ecstatic dance party. Let's talk about these parties. I discover this concept in the Dance Camp and I love it because I was always doing it (but a lot of time alone...). Ecstatic dance is very well developed in USA and start litle by litle in Europe. The principles are simple and so powerful:
- Move however you wish
- No talking on the dance floor
- Respect yourself and one another
- Drug and alcool free space
- barefoot
- no photo, video...
a freeform movement space, so much joy... I love it (and also would like to import it in Morocco)

And the best of the end, my meeting with Authentic Movement. I heard about it before of course but never stop to know it. One day, dancing in the top of the mountains of Northampton, Brando proposed me to do some authentic movement. 10 minutes each one. Deep experience for me. I remember to start feeling the sun shining on my body, the wind caressing my nake, hearing the birds, and then litle by litle letting my body moving, sensing very deeply every movement, every braith, images, feelings, I was completly revolutionized by this new state. I was here but in the mountains but also inside myself, connected with my inner simple me... Witnessing Brando have been also a new way of feeling my body through the movement of other personn, strange connection.

So simple and so powerful. I get a special Contact Quartely dedicated to AM and read it again and again... I was feeling some very strong link with it...

I had to leave USA, for Visa issue, so I decide to come back to Montreal for 10 days!

DANCE NEW ENGLAND CAMP, August 2012

During the 4th July Jam in Earthdance, I have a special connetion with Neige Christenson and Aaron Brando.

They easily convinced me to spend one week in Ausgust to the Dance Camp of New England, in Freedom (New Hampshire).
It's a creative collective of individuals (around 500!!) who love to dance, as well as a consortium of cooperatively-run, not-for-profit freestyle barefoot dances in New England area (Boston, Northampton, New York). Camping close to lake, many workshops, many people from different style, generations, crazy dancefloor every night (I mean Night, not evening, NIGHT until the sunrise...), dance parade, beach party, cabaret. Everyone was participating activily, we all sign-up in task group when we arrived.

 

  

 

   

 

 

PS: most of the photographs are not mine. I was so choked by the beauty to take any photo!

When I arrived from Vancouver, my dear friend Neige, she has already prepared my sleeping place I was traveling without tent...), welcoming like a princess...

Brando invited me to prepare and give with him the Advance CI classes during the Dance camp. Gorgeous experience. It was the first time for me... But I didn't feel any fear, I felt so conforable... I specially enjoyed the preparation phase of the class process. I introduced some precious teaching I received in Lasqueti island, like the Suspension from Eryn (Skinner releasing technique).
Total satisfaction, like a small one to one lab, trying again and again, we reached to create our proper Pattern! this point is very important for me, Contact improvisation has a particularity which is the absence of copyright and formal teaching certification programs. Classes, lab, festival, jams are place of evolution-cooking of the CI. People with different style, different body, different background, different culture take over the CI. Is it not the best way for building a Community? Going further than simple movement imitation... We have to trust on that the essence of the CI will not change and the time evolution is only getting it richer.
From my understanding the essence of the CI is the practise of inner awareness and principles of gravity and physics. The most amazing thing is that with the Russian, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japonese, American, Argentinian, Brazilian CI dancer with who I have a dance, we used together a common language based on the essence of the CI but each one of us prononciate it with a proper accent!

Below there is a draw from Susan Arnsten-Russell, of a part of our class during a session of witness/mover, and other drawing she did and I like.

I remember 2 workshops, I really appreciate (to be honnest I didn't do so much workshops, due to the late crazy dance night floor!):

Neige Christenson offered me an inestimable gift with a workshop she gave. "Freeing the contact mind". She based her workshop on a method of self-inquiry called The Work of Byron Katie." An amazing tool to manage the thoughts that can be at the rootof mental pain.

It let me think about my mental in the jam... generally I had the chance to do not have to much mental noise/ disturb. But I remember for my first jam, that the mental and its question/doubt provocated on me to tense my body, to be disconnected to my body, to my partner, to the group and to the space, to not be present here and now.
Neige went from the point that "as a dance form, CI is open-ended and indefinable and is so full of ambiguous layers of possible physical and emotional intimacy that it is distinctly ripe for personal interpretation and "story-making". Life in general, and jams in particular, can be emotionally exhausting experiences if we attach ourselves to our thoughts, as fast and furiously as they arise. I know I' not alone on this. Students and friends complain that they cannot easily "get out of their heads" and just dance, or that they get stuck in mental "ruts": habitual interpretations and judgements of themselves and others. For example: why she leave the dance, was it something I did that scared her off or was she bored with me? I'm too heavy/ too light/too inexperienced to dance with that person, etc. ".
She has the brillant idea to apply The Work to this particular stressful thought. "It consists of asking four questions and then turning the thought around to see if the opposite is a true or truer. All it takes is the willingness to drop in and wait for one's own truth to emerge. The four questions are as follows:
1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it is true?
3. How do you react when you think that thought?
4. Who would you be without that thought?
Then turn the thought around, and play with its opposite, to see if you can find genuine examples of how this might be as true or even truer than your original statement."
She published an article in the Contact Quartely Magazine, winter/spring 2008. It's a very interesting article because using a very concret example, she go very deep in her investigation, saying aloud what our mind whisper to our body... Thanks you for your generosity Neige.

 - breathwork with Holly. Neige was my partner. I didn't have any idea of what was this work. Hyperventilation, the voice of both teacher and the music help you to attain alternate state of counsciousness.

I will never spend holidays as a turist anymore, I want Camp every Summer!!!
In my life, I had such a complex link with the concept of community... Many friends are from different commnity but no community atracted me. I really do not like so much ideology for masses...
But in New Engalnd, I really feel part of the community because we share so many principles of life. "Commitment to the acceptance of and respect for all people and cultures, the empowerment of children, and the acknowledgement that our bodies and our environment are sacred... Cooperative spirit, sustainable volunteerism, consensus decision-making, non-violent communication, collective work, personal responsibility..."
They have been so welcoming with me... many smiles, many hugs, many dances, many laugh , many fingers to wipe my tears... waooo
Later,  the idea of staying there really cross my mind.
But Morocco was calling me so much. Letting New Engalnd will never bore the connection I have with this Community, never.

My next step was Boston. I didn't have any pre-idea of this city. I trust in following blindly my dear friend Neige. And, during the camp, I met Olivier Besson who is a great dancer teaching Dance improvisation in the Boston conservatory. He offered me to dance with him in the Conservatory.

VANCOUVER, August 2012, Hurdy gurdy and CI

From Vancouver island, I went to spend some days to the Metropole. Walking in Commercial drive area, my foots rooted in the floor, my head floating in the air, my legs hanging to my pelvis and my arms following any blast air...

Generosity of life, Kyle Syverson and Ryan Davis were also in Vancouver for fews days!!! I spent with them the 2 weeks in Lasqueti and we have together very good dance and human connection... Perfect to share with them an urban experience!

One night, by chance, after a dancing dinner with Kyle, we stop in the conner of a street intrigued by the atypical sound of a hurdy-gurdy. This old instrument give us so much inpiration for letting move our body. Some hours after a big street party happened, with other walkers, dancing, singing... So much joy.

David Burda, the hurdy gurdy player, accepted my invitation to make together a street performance the day after...
I was so happy the day after to see him coming, but also Kyle, Ryan and Elizabeth Hafeli (she is from Vancouver and she also participated to the Lasqueti workshop). It was good weather, so we decide to go to the Vancouver Art Gallery.

This afternoon, there were many walkers around the Art Gallery. Perfect for a improvisation performance. Contact improvisation and hurdy gurdy have been a very interesting mix for us and for the walker-audience. Elizabeth recorded us and I edit a smal video souvenir.

The rest of my stay in Vancouver, I go on dancing in the street with David. Danke!!!!