Bus Ride to Schwetzingen, Germany

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I am sitting on a bus right now with ten other people from all over the world. We are traveling to Schwetzingen, a neighboring town to Heidelberg, where the Freiburg Physical Virus Collective (tommy’s group) will be performing. And it occurred to me, as I sit here with all of these dancers, that there is not one single German on this bus. Let me tell you a bit about the people on this bus, in this company.

There is Willy, who is French-Vietnamese, teacher and co-founder of ‘l’Art de Deplacement’ a specific art form that derived from freestyle streetwalking, or, Yamakasi. He is here in Freiburg preparing for the workshop he will be holding at the theater in Freiburg in January. He is here with his girlfriend, Ines, who is from Barcelona but speaks fluent French.

There is Murielle, a PVC Dancer from Nice, France. Her dad is Italian, so she speaks Italian (as well as Spanish and English), she lives in Denmark (Copenhagen, she speaks Danish, too) with her boyfriend, Pele, a musician from Denmark (who speaks German, French).

Eeun-Mee is the PVC visiting choreographer, from South Korea.

There is Aparna, production manager for the company, from India (speaks French and English as well), and Sebastian, from Argentina, who has spent years dancing in NYC and the last 4/5 years dancing in Switzerland.

There is Maria, PVC dancer, from Porto (Portugal) who has lived in Germany for years (speaks German, Spanish, French) with her husband, Graham, who is American (speaks German). Then there is Vivi, PVC dancer, from Barcelona, living in Germany for the past four years.

Michael, along for the ride, is a philosophy student here at the University of Freiburg working on his PhD in Platonic Philosophy (I think). He is American, but lives here with his Romanian/Swiss girlfriend and has been living in Switzerland for the past five years.

Then there is me.
Then there is Tommy.
Oh, and the driver is also not from Germany. He is from the Netherlands.

AND everyone except for Willy speaks English.

Amazing.

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Photos

Louder Can You Hear Me
Vivi and Maria

Louder Can You Hear Me
The stage, pre-performance

Bus ride home to Freiburg
Michael and Murielle.