Day one.

Blogging

Blogging about Impulstanz (http://www.impulstanz.com/en/) has proven to be more difficult than I originally predicted. My daughter Evie’s week-long virus has not helped things; and living in a big city like Vienna has its challenges when you’re pushing a stroller and carrying diapers and everything else one needs for any sort of excursion with a one year old. I marvel at all the single parents in the world.

My husband Jeffrey, 14 month old daughter Evie, and I live in Winston-Salem, NC and we pretty much drive everywhere. The last week in Vienna reminded me of how much walking one does in a big city. For instance, we must walk 10 minutes to get to a tram that takes us downtown or I walk 15 minutes each way to Impulstanz classes. It’s wonsderfsul not having our car(s)! I also love operating without cell phones and all of the gear accumulates in our house-- different types of strollers, carriers, shoes, blah blah blah. Ah, to live a bit more minimally! One thing I’ve learned on this trip is that it’s good to alter your routine in a drastic way. It’s important to do this regularly and I need to remember that I don’t need to travel to Europe just to upturn the norm. Must walk or bike instead of always taking the car. Must accumulate less. Must travel more.

Vienna has inspired me on so many levels! To start off my blog (which is really a dance-themed blog) I must first begin with some things I've noticed about this glorious city the past week. Dance making and dancing, in general, requires paying attention to your environment, after all...

1. This city is old and beautiful. Its architecture is ornate and incredibly jaw dropping. The Austrians did not hold back on making a bold statement about their city’s grandeur and power; this is reflected in the old apartment buildings as much as it is in St. Stephens cathedral.
2. People here are out with their families, in the thick of it all. They push their kids in strollers everywhere and I never hear another child crying. If a baby is crying, it's usually Evie... In general, The Austrian's are happy.
3. Healthcare. Evie needed pediatric care twice because of a high fever that persisted for over 5 days. Following the fever, she had a rash all over her body for two days. All of this sucked. (And from this point forward, we will refer to the those seven days as the "lost days"). We visited a children’s hospital (St. Anna's kinderhspital) twice. Both times, the cab getting there and back to the apartment cost as much as the visit itself. Evie had a blood sample analyzed on the premises (no off-site lab) and 15 minutes later, it was determined she had a virus. We were given a prescription for some nose drops. This cost 3 euro at the local drugstore (about $4.50). We did not have international insurance. This was the out of pocket fee! In the hospital waiting room, we never waited more than 15 minutes for a doctor, and both doctors we met with spoke nearly perfect English. What are we waiting for, America? (To quote my friend David Ford's motto for change)...
4. Very few people here are obese. Very few people are homeless. I have spotted only two destitute homeless men since arriving. Both held a Gosser (local beer) in their hands and although they were both very unclean and ragged, they did not ever feel threatening. They also were not asking for money.
5. This city is immaculate. There is no garbage. Anywhere. It is also a very green city. The Viennese recycle paper, plastic, glass and aluminum, and there are clearly marked bins throughout the city to dispose of these. ALL Viennese bring shopping bags to the grocery store. (We shop at a BILLA store two blocks away, or at the famed outdoor Nascht Markt). There is no “paper or plastic?” question at the checkout counter. There is also never an individual buying a ridiculous amount of anything or multiple things in general. Grocery shopping is a civilized affair. One buys enough to eat for a day or two and then returns when this process needs to be repeated. I wonder what they would make of our obsession with Costco…
Oh, and mayonnaise here comes in a tube, like toothpaste. How smart! No need for the jar and knife and messy hand...
6. The city transit system is phenomenal. It is rare to wait more than 5 minutes for the trams (above ground rails). Also, the transit system works on an honor system. No one is there inspecting your ticket or waiting for you to pay. A week long unlimited pass is 14 euro. This is our preferable way to go. If you use it only once a day roundtrip you’ve gotten your money’s worth. Certainly, Vienna is a walking city so if one prefers that, cool. But most locals seem to prefer the bike. Every main street has a dedicated bike crossing lane with stop and go lights. Bikers and pedestrians carefully intermingle with cars, and there is always a mutual respect in the world of traffic.
7. Vienna is a multigenerational city. Old and young mingle alike.
8. Vienna is a multicultural city and Vienna is an international destination. Americans are far from the primary tourist population. I see and hear Greeks, Turks, Arabs, Africans, and Asian people everywhere and they are holding up the same Vienna city maps that Jeffrey or I hold. It’s nice to spend some time in a foreign place and not glaringly be an outsider, or glaringly be the token American tourist. One striking detail: I see many women wearing burkas here andcarrying Louie Vuitton bags. These women, who, from my ethnocentric position I would assume are unhappy, look quite content to me actually...
9. Vienna can be hot hot hot in July one day, and then rainy and cold for several days following that. I did not bring enough warm clothing.
10. Austrians do not scoff at you when you reply in English. Many speak English. Even the cab drivers are nice and do not try to take advantage of you.
11. Art and performance is not a happy side dish in Vienna. It is the main course. The museum quarter is the heartbeat of the city. Surrounding all of the stately buildings in the MQ, there are multiple museums, with multiple theatres nearby. Surrounding the theatres are open air restaurants where people wait either to enter one of these sacred spaces or talk about them after the fact with friends over a beer or a coffee. Music, dance, opera, and theatre posters are everywhere. Impulstanz posters cover public transportation spots. Everyone knows about this festival.


With this, I begin by presenting a little bit of the scene at Impulstanz. Simply put, it is international, international, international.

I began here with a two day workshop in improvisation/writing/composition with Vienna based artist Sabina Holzer. The workshop participants were from the following countries: Austria, Romania, Holland, England, France, Japan, Egypt and oh yeah, me from the US. What a gift to be around dancers from all over the world and hear about their backgrounds. All of these people spoke English in addition to their home language too. (Incidentally, the workshop teachers all speak English in class and if a student doesn’t understand, they usually can muster something recognizable in that person’s language. This makes me think how important it is to be bilingual. This also makes me realize I must practice my Greek and Spanish somehow! But I’m getting distracted. Back to Sabina’s workshop later…I’d like to instead talk about the 5 day release technique class I’m taking this week with Marta Coronado.

Marta Coronado’s release technique class moves at a slow but steady pace. She takes care to explain herself and her exercises with great precision and wonderful accompanied imagery. She is so enthusiastic. She speaks about her movement the same way she demonstrates it: passionately. After the first day of her class, I recall thinking: she is so clear, and English is not even her first language. The first day of class began with two reminders. This week is about having fun and dancing with less effort than usual. For release work, “less is more” is often an underlying concept but teachers often cannot articulate what they mean by this. Coronado does. We repeat the same exercises many times, getting faster as we go. There are never counts, they are not needed. We move together as a group, guided by moments to "go!" and execute a specific action, usually the beginning of a new chain of movements. Coronado accumulates much of the same material which is a gift. By repeating a set warm up for instance, the body can ease into the floor work with more elasticity, breath, and confidence each time. For me, I notice that I just seem to be getting longer, better stacked and aligned, my joints feel more gooey, and my presence is much more focused with each repetition. In essence, it DOES take less effort with each pass at an exercise. My body remembers the material so my mind can focus less on the sequence and pay attention to the natural pathways, directions, and initiations that naturally follow in the body and in her exercise. Class becomes profoundly intuitive, actually. I love this! This is the mark of an exceptional teacher...a post-class "high" is always a gift in any circumstance and with Coronado, I have it consistently, regardless of what state of mind or body I was in before class began. I want to give that kind of class to my students! Marta is a former Rosas dance member and regularly teaches their repertory. Her knowledge is vast. She is sparkly, incredibly energetic and yet very even with her teaching style. She is always in control of this huge morning class and her voice never gets frenzied or nervous. It’s funny how I notice these kinds of things- perhaps setbacks in my teaching style? After 2 days in her class I’m also amazed at Marta’ ability to share only 3 exercises, essentially, in a 2 hour class period and yet it is so full. So far, the class structure is the following:

1) She essentially begins with her long extended floor exercise (which she adds small changes to each morning). By the end of the week, we'll know it all. This begins with a really generous body scanning activity, which we do standing. It moves into the floor at a super slow place; pausing along the way to stretch or just breathe at key places. This exercise is then repeated 3-4 more times with speed increasing incrementally twice, and a handful of leg swings being eliminated along the way. As a result, you execute a really full floor phrase more than just a “warm up exercise.” It is dynamic in speed, effort, tempo, direction changes, and momentum. It begins standing and continues with many seated, rolling, roaming, tipping, body/floor massaging, flying, compacting and releasing, rolling, and circular journey places along the way. There is much weaving, swinging, spreading and suspending and yet little muscular effort. I hope I remember it entirely and can make it part of a movement ritual for myself. I also hope I can use it as a base and model something similar for my next technique class. What can I borrow from here and change to include in my class?
2) The second exercise is a fuller-moving standing exercise. It is more full bodied, more multi-faceted in the space it covers vertically and more for the legs and feet and how they connect to the spine. Monday’s exercise was a release in the trocanter sort of aim; with direction changing weight shifts in the feet that follow an undercurve and over curve quality. Tuesday’s was an arm swiping, figure eight swinging, coming in and out of the floor thing…familiar terrain yet still new for me! So anyways, these get repeated multiple times, with direction changes, and often with a partner to guide the initiation of something on another person’s body.
3) The phrase. It is short but complex and detailed and she takes the time to review all of the precise moments that the phrase demands. It can always be clearer. She also frequently breaks moment by moment down so that groups are facing in different directions, and are forced to see one another.
4) There are some frequent reminders about connections in the body that she repeats often:
Heel/ sitz bones
Pinky carving/side of foot carving in spirals

5) She also is a fan of retrograding material and working with the diagonals in the body in her full phrase material. So for instance, as the leg reaches across the body, the arms go in the opposite direction. This yields an opportunity for momentum of something else. As a result this momentum comes naturally, it is not forced. Her release class is economical. Big movement happens because the body is placed effectively to make it happen. It is not forced or willed, it just happens because all of the body's ducks are in a row.
6) Marta frequently talks about students elaborating movement for no good reason. Elaborating an action's functional reality is a choreographic choice but not what she wants nor is it at the core of the technique she is sharing. The pathway of the arm, for instance goes up and then down, it doesn’t flourish beyond that. I see dancers take this correction and others continue to do it "their way". Habits die hard. I may be an older dancer in this group of young people but I know this correction by now and that feels good.

More later.