Buggirl's Increasingly Strange Tokyo Tales...

Galeta Tower show.

Kyria and I, upon getting to our apartment, quickly showered and got ready.

I should say a few things about our toilet.

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As promised, ISTANBUL!

August 7th, Tuesday:

Kyria and I both slept until 10ish. We were in need of a nice sleep. We quietly ate our morning yogurt and granola. Kyria apologized for trying to steer our beds the first night. I told her not to worry about it.

We sent some emails trying to figure out if we had connections to get a nice, discounted, price on a nightclub show. If we couldn’t, Kyria would go and pay whatever and I would skip it, having seen three nightclub shows for various prices my first trip to Istanbul. I reviewed my list of contacts and such. I wanted to make sure I could be a good lesson organizer.

As I’ve mentioned before, we were also in need of alone time. I’d spent my previous week with dancers and she’d been on a boat. The fact that we’d both sometimes need our personal space, and that we were more interested in studying dance than seeing ALL THE SITES this time, were things we’d each established before agreeing to travel/stay together.

The game plan was this:

We both go off, by ourselves, and do whatever we have to do in the morning/afternoon. Meet at Taxim Square a little before 5pm. Walk together to the location Ozlem Idilsu told us to call her from.

Wake-up. Clean-up. Last day of camp, kids!

10:00-12:00: Artemisia cancels her “use of space for performers” class, so we’re all with Elisa in Intro to Arabic Instruments.

Which is better titled: Where Does Your Accordian Live? Or “It’s 10:00! Do You Know Where Your Kanoon Is?”

It was a class about identifying how your body reacts to certain instruments and exploring and expanding those reactions. A concept that drew a lot from Hossam Ramse’s approach to teaching but without fixed rules about instrument/body reactions.

My violin and my nay generally live in the same region of my body, my arms, shoulder, and upper body. However, my nays tend to be located in the outer suburbs while my violin is more complexly involved with the urban regions. My nay sections are sweetly dating but my violins are in couple’s therapy.

I could metaphor and simile the tar out of the instruments. I have a skull of visuals and a leak in the attic. The fact that some strings are made of animal guts resonates in my muscles…and that matters.

I felt in my comfort zone in this class, but it deepened my understanding of my own body…and I wrote down many a taxsim I need to buy.

I finished this feeling good, and peaceful.

12:00-13:00 Lunch! Eskimos for all my friends!

13:00-16:00 Delanna's Choreo: Lyrical Oriental or Elisa’s Choreo:Veil

I went with the veil. I felt it was the choice between which one would push me more out of my comfort zone vs which one would give me more in-wheelhouse tools I’d actively use in the near future.

Elisa’s veil choreography had a nice old school vibe with American Northwest veil sensibility. I saw that Sarah, The Enthusiastic Student, had a chiffon veil. I knew it would be impossible to get some of the moves to look right, as the choreography was for silk, and that she wouldn’t know how to slightly modify moves to make things look similar. I walked over and gave her my red silk veil and took her chiffon for the rest of the class.

16:00-16:30 BREAK.

16:30-

Both classes performed the choreographies they’d learned.

Long cool down lead by Artemisia with a side-branch of modified cooldowns by Elisa for dancers with tighter inner thighs.

Evaluations and goodbyes.

Evaluations, written ones, were anonymous, but I knew mine would obviously be mine.

I praised and then gave feedback on bringing dancers from abroad into the light. As someone dealing with jetlag, I wanted more chances to get direct sunlight (classes were in rooms with no outside light) to reset my body clock and more illuminating information on the website or in handouts regarding what was in the area, how to get from point A to point B, places to get things you might need over the course of the classes.

Many many many goodbyes were had and photos were taken.

Fifi dropped me back off at the hotel and we hugged goodbye.

I said my goodbyes to Elisa, her mother, and Delanna at the hotel.

Khalida came to pick me up, first taking me for dinner…I have a photo of this I will upload later. I drank and, because I’m on Lexipro, was happily intoxicated for the ride back to her place.

At the apartment, her husband was kind enough to launder my clothing and Khalida was kind enough not to sell used Ozma items on ebay.

I attempted to straighten out things for my upcoming flight to Istanbul…but was really too goddamned exhausted, tipsy, and tired to make sense of words.

Coming Attractions: Istanbul!

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Saturday 11:00-12:30: Artemisia: Workout and stretch or Elisa Gamal: Solo Choreo Therapy

I’d already done solo-choreo therapy so it was time to workout and stretch.

NOT SO FAST! It’s time for another venue issue! The studio set aside for Artemisia was full of Zumba-ing ladies. WTF?!

As we waited ( and some of us peeked in, caught the moves, and hall danced) Artemisia went off to figure out wtf. We were right. They were wrong. It would take calling in person X to remove the Zumbatics and by then much of our time would be up…so we were given the basket ball court.

HAHA! No sound system. HAHAHA!

A few minutes into Artemisia leading us through a relaxing workout, without the help of music for keeping time, I realized. I HAZ iPAD!

( Read more... )

The recently completed vacation is a difficult creature to fix in place.

Returning home is like stepping out of the water. There’s the relief of dry land, warmth, and the familiarity of the everyday. There is tangible evidence of your swim, but those ripples subside and the water evaporates from your skin. After that point it’s hard to fully recall the sensations of moving through water, floating, being immersed. Eventually you fall asleep without the body memories of being buoyant flittering through your muscles.

The longer the journey, the harder it is to write-up. Do you start at the end, the most recent images, and hope the beginning is there when you arrive? Do you hope your recall of the start of the journey doesn’t write over the ending? Do you submit to the fact that memory isn’t linear at all and just expand on what you can grasp at any given sitting, hoping that a whole will be made of your parts?

As I fell asleep last night I remembered an omission in my narrative: After Khalida and I stretched side-by-side at her apartment and before I was pacing, about to teach, in her studio, she’d read my cards.

( Fixed lj cut )

After a night of near-sleep and then not so great sleep, I have slept! It was a nap on a meeting room floor this morning, but I’ll take what I can get.

Ok, back to Leuven, Brussels.

Day 3 of Travel: RAKS begins.

Day Two: Dusseldorf, Germany – Leuven, Belgium

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Day 1: Dussledorf, Germany.

Khalida and I both slept in. I was exhausted from travel. She and Queenie had just finished up their multi-day Bellydance Bootcamp.

My first European workshop was a day away.

On our free day, Khalida and I thought we might do a bit of sight-seeing and take goofy pictures at a location where three countries meet…with wings. She packed the wings in the car.

( Day one continues... )