DanceIntense - the graphic proof

I finally managed to sort through and upload all the photos and videos from our two weeks, so feel free to browse through the exciting time we had!

Photos

Arrival: Intro to Elmhurst	Day 1: Classes begin	Night 2: dream talk
Evening 3: Navtej and Stella	Day 4: Technique with Stella	Night 4: pubnight at the MAC
Day 5: distorted dreams	Night 5: Clubbing in Birmingham	Weekend: day trip into town
Day 8: Mark Baldwin, day 1	Day 9: Mark Baldwin, day 2	Day 11: Shobana's workshop
Day 12: last day with Hari and Natasha	Final Night: Elmhurst, the nightclub

DanceIntense - video proof

Videos

Varsha educates Skinder on Indian languages:



Ulka asks Skinder about his philosophy on life:

the intensity winds down

Here we are, at the very last day of DanceIntense. My back is definitely on the mend, thankfully. There's a reception with (good) Indian food happening soon in the common room and we've all decided to dress up for the occasion, because we can. It feels strange wearing "civilian" clothing again. It will be strange and quite a bit sad to leave everyone, we've grown so accustomed to each other, I think it will be odd to shift back to our respective realities.

On the whole, it has been an incredibly amazing time and experience. We each leave with the new responsibility and expectations of making our best efforts to globally forge our way in the world of dance collaboratively as well as on our own. I don't think any of us is the same person as when we first arrived.

Hooray for dance! and I personally look very much forward to the exciting things I hope we will all achieve.

Hopefully, I'll make it back to Montreal on time and without issue. Well that's all folks, thanks for tuning in to read the Dance-venture Chronicles.

injuries and art

Today, the sports massotherapist came by and worked on my back so now I am actually able to go and sit in on the classes now. Turning over in bed is the most excruciating thing, but even more excruciating is not being able to dance. Ah well, at least now I can sit in comfortably enough and watch the class.

Watching Shobana at work is quite something. We started off with looking at three different paintings, one by Klimt, one by Picasso and one by Botticelli. The idea was to think of words to describe the bodies in the paintings and words that describe the space left unoccupied. One we had our words, we honed them down to six words each and got into groups to create a dance phrase abstractly describing it. Then bits of all the phrases were eventually strung together in different ways, done in groups, in duets, in trios. Now, there's a full-fledged dance choreography that has sprung from those phraselets, and what's interesting is that I can still pick out which bit is a Picasso, Botticelli or Klimt. Extraordinary stuff.

Her choreographies are tough on the body, though. So far, we have another bad back, a back neck, a sore shoulder and one possibly broken toe! Welcome to DanceIntense!

We heard the news about the possible terrorists being caught. Airport security has been upped considerably. Some of us might have problems leaving the UK, but hopefully things will calm down over the next day or two.

Right, off I go to watch tonight's final session with Shobana.

woman down

Well, I suppose it was inevitable, we've had a few injuries along the way, a shoulder, foot, sciatic nerve and now my back decided to give out. :( The strain got to it I imagine, and in the middle of something rather quiet and slow it suddenly seized up. For the remainder of the evening, I managed to dance rather creatively. I was in one choreographed piece as a prop on my back, which actually rather worked quite well. Today, the pain in still very very much there, and I sit here with an iced gel pack at the small of my back faithfully typing out my blog entry. I've been forced to sit out today, which is now starting to depress me a little since Shobana Jeyasingh just arrived and I'll not be able to dance in her classes. Maybe tomorrow, but today I'll at least sit quietly and observe and hope to give some sort of input in some other form. Injuries suck. It's all part and parcel of the profession, though, oh well.

Apart from that, it continues to be an amazing experience. Today I was interviewed by someone from BBC radio doing a piece on the DanceIntense event.

The classes with each choreographer are so different from each other. Hari Krishnan is doing the second body conditioning classes in the morning, and where Natasha's are very physical, he works from the inside out. Very interested excercises in separating body parts and expressing movement through each, tied in with imagination, concentration and the like. I look forward to see how Shobana Jeyasingh teaches her craft.

Hopefully I'll have a more healed back when I write next.

a moment to breathe

Whew. Tired. Just had a rigorous Bharatanatyam class with Toronto's Hari Krishnan. Je suis pooped. I ravenously devoured my lunch in record time and by 1:30 our contemporary classes with UK's Mark Baldwin begin. To recap a bit of the past few days:

Thursday, Friday: abhinaya (expressive dance) and technique classes in Bharatanatyam with excellent product of Kalakshetra taskmaster Stella Uppal Subbiah (I am also a product of the same lineage), followed by a sharing event on Thursday evening and an inspiring visit from two members of the UK Bharatanatyam dance company Angika.

Friday night: clubbing out in Birmingham, where it seems like 98% of the club population is Indian. There is nothing more fun than getting down on the dance floor with a posse of dance girls (and boys) you've spent all day with dancing classical and contemporary styles.

Saturday: One of the guys gave a Kathak workshop in the morning, which was quite different and fun. This was followed by lunch, a walking tour of central Birmingham and shopping. Some of the gang decided to go out again that night, and some of us stayed in and watched TV.

Sunday: received a much-needed massage from a sports massotherapist that someone had called in. Some of the troupe journeyed out to visit Stratford, and some of us (i.e. me) fell asleep nearer to the end of watching the latest Harry Potter movie. I woke up to spar outside on the grass with Skinder, one of the coordinators of Sampad. It was a fair match, though there seem to be more pictures of him getting beat up than the other way around. :) Lata Pada of Sampradaya dance school arrived from Toronto in mid-sparring session. In the evening, Hari Krishnan arrived in town and we ventured out to grab some cheap Indian-Chinese-Thai buffet food, and yes, it was all in the same buffet. After watching a compilation of some cheesy highlights of cheesy bollowood musical moments, I fell blissfuly into bed until I was rudely woken up by my alarm this morning.

That is all for now folks, I have to sprint off to class yet again!

day 2 at dance boot camp

Well, I think I got barely enough sleep and I'm fresh, breakfasted and ready to go for day two. Yesterday was of course amazing, it was all about breaking out of the box, unlearning what we had learnt, and getting the body to "think" in ways it is not used to. I am less incredibly sore today than I thought I'd be, but I think it's more numbness than anything.

The food they feed us here is... well, the very finest of "British cuisine", but we are worked so hard, it actually tastes delicious at the end of the day!

Yesterday, we had yoga with Navtej Johar, a tall, graceful, full-bearded exponent of Bharatanatyam and contemporary and creative expressions. All dancers are from such varying backgrounds in Indian dance, it's quite something to see how everyone learns new moves, and how they go about moving. We then had a body conditioning class with Natasha Bakht, followed by choreographical techniques and then creative expressions with Navtej Johar again. He is quite an amazing teacher. He speaks of the magic of space, of the expression of feeling but not emotion, the nebulousness of the imagination.

Alright, class starts again in 5 minutes, so I had best be off!

busy, busy and busy

Well folks, I thought I'd have more time to write, but it turns out, I don't, and the internet room closes at 9pm here, at the Elmhurst school in Birmingham. We basically dance from 9am to 9pm with some breaks in between to eat and quickly digest. I have about 15 minutes until my next class, so this will be very quick indeed.

So far, it's an amazing experience. The first night, sunday we had a sharing session, which was basically where each of us had prepared a snippet of a performance to show. We had a tech rehearsal in the afternoon and the show was in the evening. The next morning, we were up for breakfast by 7:30 and then dancing at 9am.

The days will basically go as such: shower, breakfast, yoga class, body conditioning class, break for lunch, then choreographical techniques, break for dinner, then creative techniques, then to bed we go and start the whole thing again the next day.

There are nineteen of us fro 4-5 different countries and we all range in age from 17 to 32. The tutors are amazing and world-renowned. I cannot stress what an amazing experience this is!

By the end of the fortnight, I expect I will be dead tired, but in incredibly tip-top shape. I will reward myself with a stay overnight in Paris before I head home, and then it's back to my other life!

I thought I would have more time to blog, but there is so little time, though I think I might try writing up some stuff on my laptop and then at the end of it, upload it to the blog for people to read post-trip.

Right, back to Dance boot camp, I go!

not yet packed

I'm off tomorrow to Birmingham, UK for a two week DanceIntense summer dance school. It should be an exciting, intense fortnight of the meeting of great minds (and bodies), flowing creativity, sharing and learning.

Needless to say, I am pretty darned excited. :)