Moment of Rasa

Where the hand goes
the eye goes:

Where the eye goes
the mind goes:

Where the mind goes
aesthetic pleasure is created.

Parul Shah, Baroda, India, 1997

Somewhere I read that truly creative minds such as Grotowsky, Brecht or Brook, acknowledge their debt to the past. Such men build on what they find. We cannot escape our debt to the past even when it is necessary to break from it.

A sense of history creates a sense of humour and a sense of humility

To Make a Dadaist Poem

If the members of the Zurich Dada group aimed at negation/destruction in the social and cultural sphere, they gave it symbolic form in their graphic and literary work through techniques of structural and semantic breakdown. One of their main techniques was systematically to exploit random pictorial and literary effects. Its most usual form was a collage-based arrangement of materials, material that were often taken from sources not conventionally associated with the fine arts.

In Tzara’s “To make a Dadaist Poem”, he offered the following instruction:

Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from the paper an article of the length you want to make a poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you

(Tzara, Seven Manifestos and Lampisteries, p. 39)

I will definitely give it a try

Elephants

In the beginning of time, the skies were filled with flying elephants. Too heavy for their wings, they sometimes crashed through the trees and frightened other animals.

All the flying grey elephants migrated to the source of the Ganges. They agreed to renounce their wings and settle on the earth. When they moulted millions of wings fell to the earth, the snow covered them, and the Himalayas were born.

The blue elephants landed in the sea and their wings became fins. They are whales, the trunkless elephants of the oceans. Their cousins are the manatees, the trunkless elephants of the rivers.

The chameleon elephants kept their wings but agreed never again to land on the earth. When they go to sleep, the elephant always lie down in the same place in the sky and dream with one eye open. The stars you see at night are the unblinking eyes of sleeping elephants, who sleep with one eye open to best keep watch over us.


From the book “Ashes and Snow” nº 3 from Gregory Colbert

GREAT photographs, full of imagination and poetry!!!

http://www.ashesandsnow.com/

Mind your Step

Seis Caras, drawing by Yvette Boulet

Mi, Mi, Do……….pause
Mi, Mi, Do……….pause

The two notes began slowly to enter into my brain….until I had to stop……..Mi, Mi, Do…………..and ask……………Mi, Mi, Do……………”What is that sound?” and someone replied: “It is a voice, it says: Mind your Step”. Oh…I get it now, it is not Mi, Mi, Do, but Mind your Step, a warning to the absent minded travellers in Schiphol Airport, a warning at the end of the rolling floor that connects the different wings of the building and again and again: “mind your step”.
An hypnotic sound that seemed to do nothing to avoid tripping and falling.

Mind your step…….pause
Mind your step……CLASH
Mind your step……BOOM

A cartoon sketch.

Then another voice soft and polite came from the loudspeaker “Mr X please proceed to gate 26”

A couple of minutes later: “Mr. X you are delaying the plane proceed to gate 26”

Pause

Suddenly a less than polite voice says: “Mr X you are delaying the plane your luggage will be off loaded”

Where was Mr. X? I thought there were many possibilities:

1- He is a terrorist
2- He fell asleep on a chair due to the hours difference
3- He got lost ion the Airport
4- He is sick and can’t leave the bathroom
5- He fell in love instantly and can’t strop kissing the girl

Funny for me, but I am sure not funny at all for Mr. X that for sure will miss his plane.

Then I wandered thinking about the choreographic possibilities of “mind your step”

I was interrupted by a voice:

“Ms. Gabilondo please proceed to gate 26”...............the voice was soft and polite.

Eclipse- Author unknown

I leave tomorrow.
I go on vacation yes and no
Part work, part family and part vacations

Important list:

1- Notebook on ideas
2- Book for the airplane
3- Digital camera
4- Tootbrush
5- Pen
6- Toothbrush 2 in case a lose toothbrush 1

And don't forget the suitcase!!

Synthesis

"Bramacharya" painted by M.Coffey


Once, Peter Brook was criticized of not being “original”. He was criticized of making synthesis of Stanislavsky, Brecht, Grotovski and Oriental Theatre.

Aren’t we all a result of synthesis in our own art work???

Bach compositions were a synthesis of Italian, French and German music. He “copied” Vivaldi in a way of learning. (As I do when I write poetry LOL)

Telemann is another good example or Mozart who was a product of a masterful synthesis of all styles.

So well yes, my work is no different I have been influenced by Peter Brook, Reinhild Hoffmannn, Butoh and the many books I read.

We influence each other.

There are no original ideas. They can come out as something new, but at the end they are a synthesis of knowledge and experience.

The difference is the language we use to give them a voice of its own

Involuntary Thoughts

Thoughts

Time of involuntary thoughts
Building slowly from the cellar of a tired feminine breath
Humid, prolonged, heavy, vibrating….the source of a feeling
Ghostly shadows of the feminine mind
Invented geometry of emotions
Concave and convex reactions touched by the lethal venom of passion
Mysteries of a soul
Conflicts of gestures
Magic trance of involuntary thoughts

History of the Night by Borges

"Mujer" de Maria A. Sanchez

Her website: http://www.sandiafria.com/

History of the Night

Throughout the course of th generations
men constructed the night.
At first she was blindness;
thorns raking bare feet,
fear of wolves.
We shall never know who forged the word
for the interval of shadow
dividing the two twilights;
we shall never know in what age it came to mean
the starry hours.
Others created the myth.
They made her the mother of the unruffled Fates
that spin our destiny,
thev sacrificed black ewes to her, and the cock
who crows his own death.
The Chaldeans assigned to her twelve houses;
to Zeno, infinite words.
She took shape from Latin hexameters
and the terror of Pascal.
Luis de Leon saw in her the homeland
of his stricken soul.
Now we feel her to be inexhuastible
like an ancient wine
and no one can gaze on her without vertigo
and time has charged her with eternity.

And to think that she wouldn't exist
except for those fragile instruments, the eyes.

Jorge Luis Borges

Your Breathing Bothers Me

Os Convidados


I have always seen a performance as team work.
No one is a star without the other, everybody is important in their own specific function.
Individualism is blended into the objective of the people involved, to give life to an idea.
What interests me more, is the creation of what has been inside my mind. It takes me months to give it a shape and to decide the expressive language it needs. I tend to do it with care and love.
Once in a rehearsal room, I am open to the comments and ideas of others, this idea that has been worked and reworked to create the heart of the piece, is not just something for what I should, alone, as the creator, get benefit. Around me, there is the team, with their suggestions and critics, a team that works together not just through the process, but through the different performances in different venues.

The team is made of people as involved as the creator- or so it should be- not because of ego or stardom but because they want to be as professional as possible.

We just need one person, to disrupt what should be the absolute pleasure of performing and setting the piece.
We just need someone disrupting the spirituality of people around, with personal and egotistical manifestations to make an event that should be happy…….sad.

For some people, they are the only ones existing in this universe, any little thing that is not adapted to them, becomes a problem.

If someone tells you: “Your breathing bothers me”, as the conclusion of successful performances, is like crossing the personal space of another, to whom just individuality is important and nothing else.

Arena Festival

Erlangen


Wonderful experience in the Arena Festival.
We met wonderful people, we saw good performances and I got invited to make a co-production for next year with the Festival.
So many creative projects for the future!
It is exciting.

So many possible themes inside my head

Creative process at work.

Algunos Pensamientos de Artaud

Light and Shadows

El diálogo- cosa escrita y hablada- no pertenece específicamente a la escena, sino al libro, como puede verse en todos los manuales de historia literaria, donde el teatro es una rama subordinada de la historia del lenguaje hablado.
Afirmo que la escena es un lugar físico que exige ser ocupado, y que se le permita hablar su propio lenguaje concreto.
Afirmo que ese lenguaje concreto destinado a los sentidos, independiente de la palabra, debe satisfacer todos los sentidos como hay una poesía del lenguaje, y que ese lenguaje físico y concreto no es verdaderamente teatral sino en cuanto expresa pensamientos que escapan al dominio del lenguaje hablado.

Mientras más sobria y restringida es la expresión más honda y pesada es la respiración, más sustancial y plena de resonancias.
Y a una expresión arrebatada, amplia y exterior, corresponde una respiración en ondas breves y bajas.
Es indiscutible que todo sentimiento, todo movimiento del espíritu, todo salto de la emoción humana tienen su respiración propia

Antonin Artaud

Reflection 

Aphorism

Painting by Armastaja


Poetry is like wine, a habit that develops with time, like most habits, like most art forms.
The more we read poetry, the more we appreciate it, just like jazz.
Until it becomes an addiction.

But now that I write this on my agenda full of scrabbles, during a short break before a performance, I take notice of the shadows.
The sun is low; swallows are brushing the sky with a breathtaking speed.
The sun is melting into the tree.

Is then that my mind changed to painting, then dance, then again poetry.

All is one

A painting that moves our spirit is a poetry made by light and shadows, like the landscape I am drinking with my eyes. At the same time it is dance it moves on space through perspective, just like poetry moves through images and rhythm.

Musicality of words…………….. The staccato or legato of colours……………….. The energy or suspension of a movement……………expression, feeling……..life.

The swallows are still flying, the sun still melting.

The wind on my face...............................

Afternoon Soap/Hoje à Tarde

Foto de Humberto Almendra
Originally uploaded by tangaloa.

Next performances

Arena Festival. Erlangen, Germany

Experimentiertheater

8th of July at 6pm and 8 pm

9th of July at 8pm

Afternoon Soap explores in an ironic way the world of soap-operas: the daily afternoon drama.

The structure of the choreography follows free narrative sequence and inconclusive ending of each episode as in television soap-operas. The interruptions of climatic moments by commercials are always present, returning abruptly to completely new circumstances and settings.Dramas are built as if the characters live through cycles of never ending catastrophic events. It follows a familiar narrative: infidelity, secrets, pain, secrets and an excess of intrigue. The characters are one dimensional- for example, "the good wife" and "the evil seducer".This work is conceived for an actor and a dancer.

The two disciplines are interwoven, dance and theatre become unified aspects of a unique performance language. Exploring the possibilities of human expression though telling the story of daily domestic drama, it is a portrait of the romantic imagination and fantasies of men and women.

Conception and Choreography Andrea Gabilondo

Music Elena Katz-Chernin-Ray Brown-Nicola Piovani-Permendes Hernández-TNX

Performers Andrea Gabilondo andLuciano Amarelo

Video Artists Hélder Dias and Susana Jacques

Light designer Rui Damas

Stage Design and Costumes Susanne Rösler

ProductionLa Marmita

Sponsors M/C Ministério de Cultura-IA Instituto das Artes-Pé de Vento

Foto: Humberto Almendra

Pensamiento Matinal sobre Arte

La creación artística tiene la necesidad de perfeccionar los órganos de los sentidos, la curiosidad de envolverse en la complicación de las características psicológicas del ser humano y la necesidad de afirmar la imaginación en todos los niveles, desde la coordinación armónica y dinámica del movimiento hasta el desarrollo sutil del tacto y la palabra.

La mayoría de la crítica de la obra de arte, desde mi punto de vista, no ayuda a comprender su contenido expresivo, ni la actitud del artista frente a la vida.

Se tiende a encerrar la obra artística en pequeños cajones, como archivos de una oficina, con nítidas etiquetas dándole un nombre, pero en realidad, el único nombre y estilo que puede ser definido es el del propio creador. Un producto único e individual, surgido de una experiencia de vida y pasiones personales.

O así debería de ser.



Image sent by a friend- Author unknown

Clown Ingredients part 2

I was talking about timing and surprise. I think I left out a very important element: expectation.
Here is the description of the process of making caramel. This was actually a description of the real struggle of this friend of mine, written while it was actually happening. While reading it I can almost smell the kitchen. Its amazing how our minds fill the gaps.

As I will do it around what he wrote.

No I decided otherwise. It would lose its original effect. I think all of us can fill the gaps. It’s better to leave it simple. It's a whole sketch by itself.

Yes, this is the best decision.

Making Caramel

Let’s say Today at 11pm

1- Goes from blonde to BURNT very quickly!
2-And even after you take it off the heat I might add!

I love the smell of burnt sugar in the morning.


11:15pm

3rd try...
OH MY GOD HOW I HATE CARAMEL!

11:18pm

Geez my apartment really stinks now.

11:26pm

If I have to go out at this hour to get more sugar, I'll be one POd baker!

11.27pm

Geez, and the cake isn't even in the oven yet.

Sleep? I LAUGH at sleep!

11:34pm

OK, it's a little on the dark side, but I think the 3rd
time was a charm!

11:35pm

Can you buy caramel candies and melt them in a double boiler?

11:50pm

It's finally in the oven!
I have a double boiler, but recipe said dissolve 1 cup
sugar in 1/4 cup water. Cook until amber color. Add 1/2 cup heavy cream.

Let's see...it's 11:50. Cooks for 50 minutes. That'll bring me to 12:40. Then another hour to cool. Hmmm...1:40.

So the question becomes...

What time do I take an Ambien?


11:32pm

Well, at least it smells good!

12:40am

Wow! That was the first cheesecake I made that didn't crack!
Wow! I can't believe how tired I am!
Wow! I can't believe I can still type!
Ow! I cut my little finger!
How now brown cow?!

I need some sleep.

Next day at 2:42pm

Well, I know people appreciated it,
BUT...
Even though everyone said it was good, I didn't think it
was that good. I think I overcooked it. Not so creamy.

Oh well! I certainly TRIED!

3:55pm


______
\ /
\ /
\ /
\/

Enjoy!

Wow....the above looked good!

How's this:

\_/

?

Three weeks later 4:41pm

Going through the fridge at work today...there was still
a piece in there! Eeeek!

Work, Train and Flyinhorse

Flying
Originally uploaded by tangaloa.

So there I go to another small working trip.
It is an extra work I accepted with a theatre group, not as a creator or a performer, but as a stage manager and I have been travelling all over the country.
Among my responsibilities are: taking care of the set, the props, the actors and the public. I get quiet nervous with these tasks, not because they are difficult, but because I am so absent minded.
I wouldn’t do this in regular bases, but is a nice way of making that extra money I need for my own performances.
Of course as any artist I have the dream that someday someone is going to be so thrilled about my work that I would be offered a subsidy and a theatre. Why not? If I dream is better to dream big.

But anyway, I was not going to talk about the economic difficulties of free-lance artists, but about landscape.

The place I went to is called Castelo Branco (White Castle) and yes, it has a marvellous castle that glows at night on the top of a hill.
The Company offered to pay the bus ticket not the train because is cheaper.
Mhh………I don’t like buses, I feel claustrophobic and I hate when they speed, besides that I can’t read, write or dream.
So, I decided to go by train and pay the difference. Wow I am a great business woman! LOL
But the magnificence of the trip is worthwhile.

For most of the trip from Entroncamento to Castelo Branco, the train travels on a one way track that follows most of the time the Tagus river bank surrounded by proud mountains.
The landscape tastes better if you listen to some flowing music just as water itself. But I chose this ongoing music, the kind made of sounds that seem to flow into infinity, like wind, it makes me see a flying horse

So there it was this amazing white horse running along the water of the never ending river, running along the lonely train, running with me.
I could see its/his/her, it is a she, definitely!
So, I could see her legs moving faster and faster…..run…..run……run……..the wind against her mane wild with joy – zoom to the horse’s head, zoom to her eyes where you can see reflected the window of the train, which reflects the river that at the same time reflects the horse. A perfect circle of reflections- run……run……run………..a suspended breath…………………………………………………………and softly, very softly there she goes to the sky. Circling the surprised proud mountains, coming down and up in loops with a grace never seen. There she comes diving down splashing the water with one wing and spreading drops of water that become like pearls under the sun. This makes me laugh, what a wonderful performance.
Magnificent view against the landscape.

Suddenly very far away I listen. “Proxima paragem Castelo Branco”. I wake up with a jump; the image of my Flyinghorse makes me so peaceful that eventually I always fall asleep.

And now while I write this in another train coming back from my trip, I see a field full of horses, eart horses.

Wind of music still in my ears.

Clown Ingredients part 1

A friend of mine posted this wonderful recipe.

Genuine Australian Camel Stew

NOTE: Recipe requires a quite large Dutch Oven,
Recommended for entertaining VIPs in Camp.

3 Medium sized Camels
1 ton salt
500 bushels Potatoes
1 ton pepper
200 bushels carrots
3000 sprigs parsley
2 small rabbits
1000 gallons of brown gravy

Cut camels into bite sized pieces, cube vegetables.
Place meat into pan and cover with 1000 gallons of brown
gravy. Simmer slowly for 4 weeks. Garnish with Parsley,
Should serve 3800 people. If more are expected add 2
rabbits.

He told me he couldn’t take credit for it because he found it while searching the Web for camels in Australia. He was curious about something he listened in the radio. He said this to me:

“I was listening to the radio, and someone mentioned camels were introduced to Australia and the population has exploded because they thrive in the arid environment and have no natural predators...I was curious”

I am glad for his curiosity.
This takes me back to a clown workshop I took a year ago.
Before that I was completely uninterested about clowns, those red noses and slapstick scenes didn’t move my heart. It was until I lived through the experience of creating my own clown character that my respect for this profession grew.
To become a clown you have to be able to laugh at yourself and to be able to laugh at yourself needs a lot of self-confidence as we know.

There is a special technique to wear the nose. You have to give your back to the audience in the rehearsal room, just like you do with a mask, because at the end a red nose is one of the simplest but most wonderful masks.
When we give our back to the public, many times it can be translated in stage language, as “I am not here”.
Then you have to decide the timing to appear (or turn to face the public). Are you going to face the audience, slow and shy, slow and mean, fast and nervous….all this will define your character from the beginning of the improvisation. Make a bad choice and you are stuck. So you have to be absolutely playful with yourself and be very aware where you are going with your situation..

There is nothing worse than trying to make laugh and face no reaction. To be able to make laugh others, we need to be absolutely serious about our character, the circumstances and the way we will react to the situations we create. But this is just one tiny part.

Timing and the surprise element, is another important part.

This friend of mine is very funny, he has timing. Although he honestly doesn’t credit himself with the “Camel Recipe”, he has a natural gift as a clown. He makes a “divertissement” of the recipe:

1- OK, I've got the camels, but had a few problems sneaking them in past my landlady and up my stairs.
They are loud, and smelly.

2-I also have the other ingredients, and all of a sudden...a thought came to me that one could probably halve this recipe for fewer people.

Oh well, I guess I'll just have some leftovers to freeze

3-I truly entertain myself.
And the camels think I'm a riot, as well.
(yes, I understand camel-speak)

And so on.

My friend has absolute credit to another recipe “Caramel”, it is a great example of timing and surprise. But this will have to be posted later. If not this one will be too long to read.

To be continued……

I want to be a dancer

Dancers arms

When I was a little girl, my mother used to play over and over again the Violin Concerto of Beethoven, I remember that my first improvised dance steps began there. It was Oistrakh playing, if I well remember.
As every child, I dreamed to become an astronaut or a fireman/woman or a dancer. My parents found this to be very cute.

The first dream to go away was about extinguishing fires, years later I gave up on being an astronaut, but the dream of becoming a dancer stayed. Not so cute anymore for my parents though.
Their argument was logical. They were artists themselves and they wanted for their daughter a more secure career, even becoming a musician was better than a dancer.
Dancers at the end had been at the bottom of the artistic list for ages. But I continued my dream. Yes I became a dancer. And I was proud of myself to have endured, competition and diets.

Working in a theatre is like living in another planet, because it IS another planet. I was proud of having a good job. At the end I could show to my parents that I could have a secure job, if I was careful enough not to break a knee.

But to the outside world, my profession was dubious. There were the people that asked me: “which is your profession?” or “what do you do?” (Funny I always feel like answering: I breathe). Of course I would proudly say: “I am a dancer”. So people would insist: “I mean what do you do for a living? “. “I am a dancer” I would gently repeat. “No, no, which is your career?”………they couldn’t understand that dancing was my profession. As many governments can’t understand this either.

Then I met the people that thought I worked in a cabaret, with feathers and high heels, entertaining the male eye. When I would try to explain, with my rehearsed patience that I was a “professional dancer” not a stripper. They used to change conversation, as if I was lying.

Today I am still a dancer, but I principally create dance-theatre pieces.. Today some people that ask me: “which is your profession” and I say: “I am a choreographer”,. react with a tiny pause and a lack of focus in their eyes especially if they are from the tax office. I realize they don’t know what a choreographer means, so they don’t ask.
Many times I imagine it has to sound to their ears something like “Photographer” or “Cartographer”

When at last my mother accepted the choice of my profession, she was happy that I was a ballet dancer. Many years later, when I had become a “Cartographer”, she was unhappy. “Daughter”- she would say with a sight- “Do people like your crazy choreographies?” She never could understand how I could have switched from Ballet to completely avant-garde. I stopped sending her videos of my work and also I stopped making money with my art.

But this doesn’t discourage me. I still think I made the right decision. I prefer to watch the astronauts in TV and I always feel that it would be too claustrophobic the trip for me anyway. And also impossible to dance.

Something from Suzanne Beecher

A friend of mine sent me this. She told me that my post "Indecision", made her remember this written by Suzanne Beecher.

She is very funny, here are her links:

http://dearreader.typepad.com/dear/
http://www.dearreader.com/

Whenever I'm getting ready to say something that I feel strongly about,that emotionally touches me, I get all jumbled up. My body gets tense andI'm wishing for a quick dress rehearsal--some time to think it through, butthere isn't any.
And then to make things even more stressful, suddenly the words don't seem good enough. Maybe I should play it safe and considerexchanging "my" words for some of the "how-to-say-it" suggestions that I'veread about in books. "Words guaranteed to make people listen and really'feel' what you're saying." But the fancy words, the clever phrases--they don'tfeel right to me. I'm really better at just being me. My first couple of sentences may run-on a bit because it takes a moment forme to get used to the "feel" of saying what's really on my mind. And that's okay; a little fumbling makes a person seem more approachable.

I'm hoping my simple words will be enough to make a difference, because they come from my heart--they're for real. Cutting loose with feelings, the stuff that I swore I'd never tell another soul--it's scary. I get anxious, short of breath, and the heat quickly risesup through my body. But for me, that's the go-ahead sign, the evidence that it's something I really need to say.*****

Selling a Solo

Selling a solo performance is always hard, unless you are famous or you have a wonderful agent.
Well, I am not famous that is for sure and I have no agent, I am my own agent as it seems.
But most artists are the worse people to sell their own creations. At least that is what I think or perhaps I am just projecting myself.

In the north they wanted a performance. They wanted “Afternoon Soap”, my choreography with an actor, but the deal was besides paying the expenses, just to give me 50% of the entrances. This always translates into: “I will pay for performing” lol
Not great deal of course. But then there is this other voice “but it IS a performance”, so I thought that by offering a solo instead, I was being very smart. I didn’t have to pay the actor and my light designer had less hours of work, what made it cheaper too.
Of course I forgot my own work, the hours of rehearsals to prepare the show.

I don’t have to go on with the experience, of course I lost money and although it went well, I had no public. Why? Because of poor publicity from the organizer.

I tried to be positive: “At least I filmed it”

But yesterday, when I could feel the tiredness, I said to myself like the crow: “Never More”.

Why people think that art is no work?

Why everybody want things for free?

I have to explain so many times, that it is not free for me. There is a set to move, a light designer to pay and if there are other artists, I have to pay them too. I have to explain, that I can’t pay from my own pocket so an organization exhibits proudly the many performances they organize.

“Never More” said the crow

I hope this time I mean it

Crítica de "Hoje à Tarde"

Por Anastácio Neto:


http://oviciodaarte.blogspot.com/2004/12/hoje-noite-dana-teatro-no-vilarinha.html

Para uma descrição da peça ir para:

http://www.lamarmita.com/afternoonsoap.htm

Poetry worth reading

I found a wonderful poet: Max Bouillet

http://www.blogexplosion.com/show_page.php?SiteID=11764

A Porta Aberta/The Open Door 

Nice image sent by a friend. Unfortunately I don't know who the author is.
Cycles

Recycling choreographies

So.....I was asked to make a solo for a performance with an actress. Little problem: I will be inside a small terrace, not too much space to move. I thought about special lights or mirrors, so that some effects could surprise the eye, I know the difficulty of the space will "eat" the idea.

So the actress is going to say these poems by Sofia de Mello, a portuguese poet. I read them with care. They are about, death, destiny, the Minotaur and the labirynth.

Two years ago, I made a solo that talked about this, but it was based in the Moiras mith, the three sisters responsibles of the string of life. In this choreography, I used a string as the source of impulse in different parts of the body....a constant big chord, never stopped comming down from the ceiling.
It didn't matter what happened to the character in this landscape of light and shadows, it didn't matter that through growing old the use of the string changed to different parts of the body, making the movement sometimes beautiful and sometimes grotesque. It didn't matter that at the end the characters dies.....the movement of the chord, coming down slowly as if from the sky never stoped. Even when the character stopped moving......destiny.

So I will recycle the idea, the string...of life and death....destiny

Self-esteem-booster

Problems with self-esteem, like the majority of humans?

I found this helpful Site. Things to help ourselves when we have that negative little voice talking inside our head. Things we know we should do, but seldom set into practice.

http://www.self-esteem-nase.org/Self-esteem-booster.shtml

Curiousity Again

The previous article made me thing about depression. Why is that?
Because, we lose our curiosity when depressed.
We get into the state I call: “looking at the wall”
But we stare at the wall not looking for its wonderful design or for the random organization of dust, that can look like a Pollock painting or because we want to measure the tiles or touch the quality of the paint……we stare at it, because we are numb. As simply as that, we lose any kind of curiosity in life. This inaction, bring us to more inaction.

We are doing a lot by doing nothing. Even our shadow is depressed.
We lose curiosity, what makes our soul be an adventurous child.

Curiouser and curiouser by Robin Archer

The arts must ask its audience to throw out a lifeline to curiosity in all things in order to survive and prosper. ByRobyn Archer.In my essay "The Myth of the Mainstream" (Currency Press, April 2005), I talk about curiosity being amongst the finest virtues of humankind and how this was revealed to me when I looked back trying to recall the first symptoms of my father's frontallobe dementia: I eventually felt that it was this ever-curious man's loss of the vital stream of curiosity.

The curiosity factor has become a potent metaphor for me. I can't help thinking that once the blinkers are on, there's only oneroad ahead-and that leads to death.

Anyone who approaches art, or virtually anything, only wishing to defend their own tastes, anyone who won't lookat something because they fear it won't be to their liking, anyone who bags something before they've seen it, mightas well be dead already. They've lost their sense of curiosity. They're winding down.

One of the most powerful, and perhaps accidental, foes of the preservation and stimulation of curiosity is thatall-pervasive factor of contemporary life - marketing. I say "accidental" because at the start of the 20th century, and atvarious peaks throughout that time, when waves of social reform produced increasing numbers of citizens (first in thedeveloped and then the developing nations) who experienced a phenomenon at that point only known by wealthy, that is,leisure time and spare cash, marketing itself was a new and exciting tool that existed precisely to stimulate curiosity.

But as early as the mid-19th-century snake-oil merchants were derided so thoroughly that their profession entered thevernacular, and in the 1950s the same happened to used car salesmen.These days, when marketing is a career, one still sees the altruistic basis of the trade in the very best of the advertising branchof marketing, when the skill of art directors, graphic and video artists and especially concept developers, grab our attention andstimulate our curiosity enough to take the next step and try to satisfy that curiosity about an available product, be that newtechnology, food, insurance, entertainment or art.

The difficulty for art, unlike entertainment, is that it is hard to commodify and therefore hard to market. And the very art mostlikely to stimulate the sense of curiosity is always the most fragile. Marketing when applied to the arts is at best crude andat worst destructive. Hype may get your audience to the shimmering waters of art, but the audience will notnecessarily drink .

In precisely the same way as one needs to address the people at this time, not the politicians, the arts must go outside thesegmented and ultimately blinkered nature of targeted marketing, and ask its potential audience (which I believe knows nobounds) to throw out a lifeline to curiosity in all things.If ordinary people are scared of the arts, a highly disputed piece of parochial, reductive and selective marketing research, thenour job as artists and commissioners of new work is not to try to persuade them to enjoy a particular piece of art, or even artitself, but to ask them to live again fully in all things, and put an end to lives which are driven madly by the false ideals, objects,and icons which marketing itself has created.This achieved, audiences would come thirsty to art and ready to drink deeply. There would scarcely be a need for marketing inthe arts.Finding the means to achieve that is the challenge.

Until that renewal is complete, the parallel universe of the small symbolic following for art must be maintained, and new worksfrom artists vigorously commissioned and nurtured in the knowledge that the ripple effect of the creative lightning bolt willalways remain an important part of what artists, their commissioner-presenters, and the informed critique that broadcasts theseactions, always do when that tripartite cultural activity is in a state of grace and good health.

This is an extract of Robyn Archer's Alfred Deakin Innovation Lecture "Imagination and the Audience: Commissioning for Creativity" deliveredon Saturday at the Melbourne Town Hall.******************

About Teaching

I love to teach, I love to motivate my students not just into dancing, but also into enjoying their trips of discovery, about their own creativity and possibilities, not just in art, but also in life.

I love to teach, but I can’t stand the endless meetings, where I have to listen to the endless talks of the “I know best about the system” guy…….or the “we need to organize another meeting to talk” woman (generally to talk about the same issues that have no resolution). I love to teach but I hate to give grades, that to my eyes in art, are absolutely relative and which many times take away motivation with no fundamental real cause.

I love to teach, but I feel like a fish out of the water with the system.

Yesterday I found this article. Is just marvellous and I agree 100% with it. I felt I was not alone.

The article is called “The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher” by John Gatto

I highly recommend it

Here is the link:

http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

Um Día Difícil

Um solo, uma bailarina, uma noite de insomnia e uma entrevista importante ao dia seguinte. Uma peça ironica e divertida.

La Marmita apresenta: "Um Día Difícil". Coreografia e interpretação de Andrea Gabilondo, o día 4 de Junho as 21H 30, no Café Concert em Viana do Castelo.

[img]http://www.lamarmita.com/images/hipera1.gif[/img]

Indecision

Sooo…….here I am undecided…..should I write in Spanish? In Portuguese? In French? Or I stick to my English that is far than perfect?
I already found the first problem to my Blog: Indecision 1

Then appears Ms. Indecision 2…should I stick to a single theme? Should I be playful and informal? Or should I just talk about choreography and art?....Mhh……

The other day that I decided to make this page, I didn’t know anything about the Blog community. In the instructions, they said: “There are no rules”…Yuppee!! I felt like a free child…..NO RULES!!!!!! But after navigating into this new world, I realized that many, many talented people are writing not just intelligent and witty posts….but besides that, they are GOOD writers. Mhh…I am definitely not a writer. Should I be myself? Or Should I pretend to have a talent I don’t have? Ok I will be myself….this was difficult to decide lol
Ok. Ms Indecision 3, it was nice to meet you anyway.

And this takes me to think about our days. Since we wake up, we are constantly deciding, it never stops. Should I wake up and go to work or should I enjoy the sun and do nothing? Should I have coffee or green tea? - That they say makes you look 10 years younger- Should I take the train or a cab?
I prefer to let myself go with the flow of life, if I think too much I get undecided again.

Perhaps if I take the word “should” out of my vocabulary, I wouldn’t have to struggle with the options I face everyday. Why not instead of saying: “I should work” or “I should write”, I change the word to “I would love to go to work “, “I would love to write” and especially “I would love to be myself”

Then it doesn’t matter in which language I write and it also doesn’t matter if I am not a writer. Just like creating choreography, the idea “talks” to me and I follow it, enjoying the process of discovery with no fear. Then there will be no more indecision, because the fear to be mistaken or “wrong” disappears.

I think this is the right track

Dada Poetry

According to Hugo Ball, inventor of dadaist phonetic poetry, we must withdraw into the deepest alchemy of words, reserving to poetry its most sacred ground": a program whichwould have -appealed to Velemir Chlebnikov, "eternal prisoner of assonance", for whom the alphabet was a "table of sounds". Chlebnikov wanted to immerse himself in the depths of the Russian etymons, of the etymological night, in search of a mythical panslavonic language "whose shoots must grow through the thicknesses of modem Russian". The ultra modem tends to link up with the archaic, eternal contradiction of avant-gardes. Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring' (composed in the years 1912-13) is a musical flight from time, a return to the common archaic background, to magic, spells, a primitive religious paganism.Illogical phonic sound, abstract poetry, was taken up by dadaism from Italian and Russian futurism. In Zurich, at the Cabaret Voltaire, founded in 1916 by five friends, Hugo Ball Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, Marcel Janco and Richard Huelsenbeck, first simultaneous poems by Henri-Martin Barzun and Jarry's "Ubu Roi" were recited. Later Tzara declaimed some of his simultaneous such as "La Fièvre Poems, puerpérale" a "Froid Lumiére", for the purpose of representing the dualism between the soul (the voice) and the world (mechanistic process, fate) represented by noises. "Les chants nègres" was a collective performance with masks, soutanes, drums, dances: a sort of funeral service.Here, one evening, Hugo Ball read his "Verses without words", based on the equilibrium of vowels, regulated and distributed exclusively in relation to the phonic value of the initial line. Clothed in azure, scarlet and golden cardboard, with a cylindrical shaman's hat on his head - it is Ball's own description - "I began with:*The accents became heavier, _expression increased with the intensification of the consonants. I soon noted that my means of _expression, when I wanted to be serious (and I wanted to be at all costs) no longer corresponded to the pomp of the staging... to the right on the lectern I had "Labadas Gesang die Wolken" (Labada's song to the clouds) and on the left "Elefantenkarawane" (The caravan of the Elephants)... the dragging rhythm of the elements had permitted me a last crescendo, but how to continue to the end? I then noticed that my voice, which apparently had no other choice, was assumed an ancient cadence of sacerdotal lament in the style of the masses sung in the Catholic churches of the east and west. I do not know what this music inspired in me, but I began to sing my sequences of vowels in recitative liturgical manner. The electric light was turned off as arranged and I was carried away covered in perspiration like a a magical bishop who disappears into the abyss" (Dei Flucht aus der Zeit" "The flight from time", Munich, 1927). Thus was dada phonetic poetry born.

Moments in Life

There are moments in life when you miss someone so much that you just want to pick them from your dreams and hug them for real! When the door of happiness closes, another opens; but often times we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the one, which has been opened for us. Don't go for looks; they can deceive. Don't go for wealth; even that fades away. Go for someone who makes you smile, because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright. Find the one that makes your heart smile. Dream what you want to dreamgo where you want to go; be what you want to be, because you have only one life and one chance to do all the things you want to do. May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human and enough hope to make you happy. The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way. The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past; you can't go forward in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches. When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so at the end, you're the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying.

Author unknown

La Palabra "Trabajo"

LA PALABRA DEL DÍA trabajo

En este Día de los Trabajadores, tal vez sea oportuno recordar que la idea de trabajo estuvo desde muy antiguo asociada al concepto de tortura. En efecto, la palabra trabajo proviene de tripalium, que era el nombre de un temible instrumento de tortura.Tripalium (tres palos) es un vocablo del bajo latín del siglo VI de nuestra era, época en la cual los reos eran atados al tripalium, una especie de cepo formado por tres maderos cruzados donde quedaban inmovilizados mientras se les azotaba.De tripaliumderivó inicialmente tripaliare(torturar) y posteriormente trebajo (esfuerzo, sufrimiento, sacrificio).Trebajo evolucionó posteriormente hacia trabajo, vinculándose poco a poco con la idea de 'labor'. Lo mismo ocurrió en francés, lengua en la cual tripalium derivó en travail (trabajo), vocablo al cual los ingleses dieron la forma travel y un nuevo significado, asociándola inicialmente a la idea de 'viaje cansador' y, más tarde, simplemente viaje.

From:

LA PÁGINA DEL IDIOMA ESPAÑOL http://www.elcastellano.org