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Published: April 5th 2008
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Louis Blanc
tram tracks near our apartment 3/27:
We have been here in Montpellier just over a week and a half. We leave this coming Monday, still five days away, yet I already feel the transition of preparing to move on. This is the funny thing about this whole residency process; you take one week to fully settle in, you have a few days where you feel settled in, and then your body/mind/soul begins the process of letting go and creating space for travel and the new place you will travel to. It is both a cleansing and a draining/exhausting experience to travel, to go from one place to the next, to attach and detach from a place And yet, even though you are giving energy to this process, you feel on a certain level that you are never really here. You are never really anywhere. I think this feeling is much stronger and present than when one is living in one place for a long time. It really takes time to connect with a place; it truly does. And if you are not connected with the place you are in, then you are nowhere. You become, in fact, much more connected with your own mind and
Centre Choreographique Nationale a Montpellier
this is the Dance Center. Convent turned women's prison turned convent turned Gestapo Prison turned Dance Center. body and then things going on with yourself, in fact. It is very easy when traveling to become more inward-looking both in eye-opening and blinding ways.
We have had a lot of down time here while rehearsing. Time to go to the organic market in town, time to roam the streets of Montpellier, to get sucked into the oldness of it. The fountains, the small squares. It is very quiet and peaceful here. It is a young city—you see many youngsters walking around. By youngsters I mean college students—which I guess to me are already youngsters. ☺ There are many Universities here which attract young people, and in addition the city is in the South, near the Mediterranean which also attracts young people and a sort of free-spirited 'joie de vie.’ There are many vagabonds in the streets—young people with their big dogs, raggy clothes, a can of beer, shaved or long hair, piercings, with a hat on the ground asking for money. They are all very friendly. And they all seem to know each other.
There are musicians in the street playing with an open guitar case asking for money. There are many of them in Montpellier—I
Black Box/Rehearsal Space
The light coming into the theater was quite imposing. It made me want to fall asleep when I walked into the room. even once saw to groups get into a small quarrel over whose turn it was to set up their music equipment in the Place de la Comedie at a certain hour. One arrived, began discussing with the musicians already there, both groups began talking louder, got on their cell phones to call someone, then finally the first group left. Several minutes later, the guitarist, a man in his 50’s with a shaggy dog as his companion who used the guitar case as his doggy bed, began to play his music with a smile, as the city-goers passed by.
There are many kebab shops and ethnic (for lack of a more politically correct term) shops and restaurants in Montpeller, and many people of North African and Middle-Eastern descent. Sometimes there are women in the streets (Southeastern Europe I believe) begging for money to feed their children (who are usually seated or lying next to the mothers).
We rehearse everyday from 10 AM to 6 pm, with an hour lunch break. Occaisonally we each get individual breaks depending on whether we are needed for the work being done at the moment. The process has felt slow to me, and very
relaxed. We begin each morning rehearsal with one hour of individual warmup, and each afternoon with a ½ hour of the same. This time is to be used to prepare yourself for rehearsal and you can do that however you wish. Most of us spend much of the hour stretching or lying on the floor. Liz, who is trained in many different types of bodywork, brought us all the BodyMelt method balls—a canvas bag with three different-sized rubber balls inside. You use them to do a series of exercises that work to rehydrate the connective tissue (fascia) in the feet. They are truly wonderful—and exactly what myself, someone who has extremely tight feet (which viktorija says leads to the stiffness/tightness in my legs and hips) needs. They are like a breath of fresh air. And so simple! All you have to do is breath deeply as you rub and press the rubber balls on the bottom of your feet.
Beginning my professional dance career on White Oak Plantation (our first dance residency in Florida) is probably the most skewed first impression of what it is like to work in this profession. It was truly luxurious—food and housing was taken
care of, there were wild animals and lots of forests, lots of things to do, everything was free.
Having my second experience be in residency in Montpellier is a bit closer to reality, but still quite luxurious. The dance studio and Choreographic Centre here is really amazing. It is in a very old building that has been refurbished to house six dance studios, a dance library, and lots of office space. It is a building with a very long history, beginning in the 16th century (my dates my be a century off) when it was a Convent. From then to now, the Convent became a women’s prison for a while which was known for its brutally cramped living conditions and violence among inmates. The prison eventually was turned back into a Convent, then was a prison and torture facility for the Nazi Gestapo during World War II. After the war the building lay empty for a while before renovations began to convert the space into a National Choreographic Center.
The space we worked in every day was very beautiful and a wonderful place to be every day. It was a black box theater, but with huge windows that
shuttered open and closed, and let in lots of light. One thing that I did not expect (and which did not happen in White Oak) was having constant visitors coming in and out of the space during our rehearsals. Constant interruptions. This was quite bizarre at times given the nature of the piece (which involves robing and disrobing at times).
Some of the impromptu visitors we had in the space were:
-the cleaning lady (atleast once per day)
-the head technician (several times, as he pleased)
-school groups of up to 20 schoolchildren on a field trip (three times during our stay)
-Mathilde Monnier—famous dance choreographer and curator for this Choreographic Center
-Gerard--apparently well-known dance critic in France
-technicians.
-pigeons (hanging outside on the windowsill and always peeking in!!)
Yesterday (Sunday) was our final day in Montpellier. Shortly after sunset the cloudy day turned into a rainy day. As rain began to hit the kitchen window, Christina commented that the city was crying because we were about to leave. It was a beautiful image, and captured my own melancholy both for having to move on to another place and for leaving such a wonderfully beautiful place as
Convent Alley
The street near the dance studio and apartments where we spent lots of time. Lots of wonderful restaurants on this street. Montpellier.
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To be traveller
Nice description of the state of being a traveler. It complements your photos with perspective melting into the distance.