trace de pas

St. Aubin

Sitting in the shade of some trees at the base of the church St. Aubin, finished with my shopping at the market and listening to a really talented street musician on an instrument I don't know the name of.  Really, just a wonderful day.

The silhouette of the musician, and all his admirers

Sunshine streams down around me, illuminating the deep brick colors of the buildings and roofs across the street and putting in a serious bid that we're not quite done with summer. Pain au chocolat from my usual market-baker, and some dried mango make the perfect early Sunday afternoon snack, and finally, I'm peacefully content. There's something so wonderfully French about renting one of the city bikes (free for the first half hour) and riding into the city to do my shopping at the Sunday market (organic tomatoes, fresh fruit, dried mangos, almonds, candied ginger, fresh garlic)...   Makes the harder days seem far away and reminds me of some of the reasons I decided that to pick up and move to this far away continent.

Back home: It's nice to just find the little things -- the bookseller who has an open bottle of wine, the pleasure of having a clean apartment, painting while sitting and drinking my cup of tea, talking to family and friends on skype -- are starting to be incredibly reassuring, rather than strange.  Friday night I went over to Emily's apartment to help her with her internet -- Emily's one of the other new Americans, but she's 18 and this is her first company, neither her nor her mom speak any French -- so I called to find out that there is a mouse on their line (not so sure if that's literal or a French turn of phrase) and set up a technician to come on Monday for them.  It makes me grateful that of all the places I could have ended up, the country where I already spoke some of the language is where I ended up -- the helplessness is really a huge factor when you can't even say "can you please send a technician to fix my internet, it's been a few weeks now and I neeeeeeeeed to have contact with the outside world!" or some such thing.  

Saturday night was Flavian's 18th birthday (one of the youngest dancers in the company; he grew up in Toulouse), so we went out to dinner at an African restaurant.  I still am somehow astounded by the number of languages spoken at the table -- Russian, French, English, Spanish, Armenian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Italian -- and those are just the native speakers, with all sorts of crossovers in between.  It just brings a whole new dimension to discussions, with points where you're limited by your lack of knowledge, and where your communication base is broadened by getting to pick expressions from each of many languages that fit the situation the best.  

And my relationships with the family are continuing to deepen.  I've been alternating reading bed time stories to the kids with playing multiplication flash-card games (great for me to practice my French numbers), and Colombe came home this week with cinquante sur cinquante (50/50) on her multiplication times table.  They also taught me my new favorite French word, "trace de pas" which means foot print, or the trace of a step :)  Again, it's the little things that are the ones that make you smile :) 

wildfire

This week the future has been stretching out in front of me in a peculiar way, either the inverse or the continuation of my musings about my New York shadow self, I haven't decided yet.  Now I'm starting to actually feel the decision to not go back to school not only as missing those people and that place, but also as the rest of my life opening up. The freedom that we all have to choose our lives is feeling particularly tangible, in a good and scary way.  Now I get to start thinking about how long I want to stay here, what I want to accomplish with my dancing, what I want to be in my life while I am dancing, what I want to do after.  Not that these are new questions, they're just being addressed in a different time scale now, which changes the answer some.  Most of the dancers here have been here for many many years--six and you're given an indefinite contract, meaning you need to be fired, rather than hoping each year to be rehired, and you can apply for French citizenship.  That seems very far away, and certainly things are going to change when Kader takes over, but it's also an idea I can entertain, at least.  What would it look like for me to actually live here for a while? And the other big question is of what comes after.  University, I think, almost certainly, but in what?  Do I want to do something that continues on a path related to dance, or something completely separate?  Over lunch yesterday I had a great conversation with Julian, my Norweigan yogi, and Valerio, one of the principal men who I really like, who is going to be a new father in the next few weeks :) So while Valerio was plucking away at his little travel guitar, we talked about how to deal with the entrenched power structures of society, and the tragedy of the American dream, and how all the world is trying to emulate the soulless consumerism of Hollywood. Of course, there are all sorts of wonderful things that we could be exporting, but endless work and never being satisfied with what you have... Not the mindset the world needs, not with all of what we need to accomplish. But then, how do we change that mindset?  Is living your own life in as a healthy, modest, aware, empathetic human being enough, or is setting an example not contagious enough?  The most powerful people in this world are reaping the benefits of the current system, they are not the ones who are going to change it.  So how then does the wildfire start, where do we light it, and how do we sustain the flame?

elena

The shows this weekend went wonderfully -- everyone stayed on their feet, Nanette was happy, the principals were all beautiful, I felt good.  The theater was in a casino, so slightly smaller, and outside of the city unlike our other two theaters, but still very nice, just modern.  There was a really nice sense of camaraderie among the dancers, and lots of people made sure especially to say "merde" and "toi toi" (the French equivalent) to all of the new dancers before the shows.  Performing again is fun, and feels like a nice little night cap on my return to the daily routine of dancing;  I love getting to see the little kids in the first few rows of the audience, getting to channel characters that I don't normally embody, getting to share my art for a few hours... It feels good.

Doing Giselle has such a lovely tradition behind it, a weight of years that is almost palpable once you've put on the costume and painted yourself into a pale pale ghost.  And there are actions required of you in the true classical ballets, like standing perfectly still on the side of the stage for thirteen minutes, with the exception of getting to switch the one foot you're standing on every few minutes, that create a) lots of muscle pain, b) an effect that's magical to watch, and c) lots of time to be held slightly hostage to your thoughts.

Sunday was the two year anniversary of the day that Elena Shapiro was killed by a drunk driver, three weeks after I joined Carolina Ballet.  There are many people who knew her and loved her better than I did who can speak to her loss better than me, but losing someone always leaves a mark.  I've been thinking about her a lot this past week, remembering the Sunday two years ago after we found out about the accident when we had to run Swan Lake twice with no one to dance her spot, where all of the swans were actually crying during the "Sad Song" and where the act of dancing while feeling that emotional was both heartbreaking and cathartic.  Somehow that afternoon broke an artistic barrier inside of me, and tied my grief to dance on an almost subconscious level -- one that I wasn't quite aware of doing happy children's ballets or Balanchine.  But these tragic classics... Putting on the white practice tutu even, narrating a story of loss and tragedy and magical powers controlling the fates, it brings me right back to when it was all fresh.  Not so hard to cry over Giselle's body in the first act, or to become a man-hating Wili when I start thinking of the idiot who killed her.

More happier thoughts soon -- I've been doing lots of thinking this week, had a couple really wonderful conversations about saving the world and what is going to be necessary to change the collective consciousness to one that appreciates quality over quantity and how to really truly create beauty... My kind of lunchtime small talk ;) More on that next time, and on La Reine Morte, the new Kader ballet we're working on for October's program :)

a corner turned

A corner has been turned, I think.  The beginning of the past week was a little hard, with something between culture shock and just normal loneliness creeping up through the first few weeks.  My frustration over my limitations with French was mounting, I'd spent a few too many hours by myself in the apartment, I didn't yet have a phone (let alone really know what there was to do) so I couldn't particularly make plans,  I had to walk up hill both ways to get anywhere...   Hopefully I'm past that now.

Monday morning (day two of our weekend) I put on Sophie's feather earrings, and picked myself up all the way to the city center, and commenced with my long to-do list.  The prefecture (yeah, going again next Monday, by 11 am they closed the ticket machine, because there were already more people waiting than would be seen by 3 pm), all of the major French mobile carriers, an interior furnishing store, a little "artisan" bakery for lunch, a dingy phone store to unlock my iPhone, the Capitole square while I was waiting for the phone to be unblocked, back to the best of the mobile offers, and home!  Incroyable!  So, the longer summary:

The home-furnishing store left me mostly with art supplies -- I'm excited about my cylindrical cardboard boxes and painting supplies in order to be little storage bins for my desk or closet.  I also have lots of drawing paper -- decoration ideas any one?  The phone situation, despite being quite the run around, was eventually successful!  I had to go back the next day to the unlocking-hacker-guys after I'd accidentally synced my phone a little too much with my computer, and had Apple get mad about my newly acquired international abilities, but NOW, ladies and gents, I officially have a French phone.

In the lovely phone-hacking store, however, I was reminded about quite how small this little world is -- also waiting for their new phone was a lovely couple in their 20s from Victoria, BC.  The girl is studying at the Toulouse Business School for a semester, and her boyfriend just graduated from the UVic MBA program, which, it so happens, is where Mum is helping design the new Sustainable Development program, and why yes, they do know who she is.  Got to love Canadians ;)  So we exchanged facebook information, and will be going out for dinner some time soon, lovely lovely.

My French feels like it is just barely peeking its nose around the corner of something new, where I'm understanding more and more and there are starting to be French words on the tip of my tongue when I need them.  The kids spent a while during our story time trying to get me to make that lovely French "ooouuu" sound that just doesn't quite happen in English.  I've been reading chapter books for 7 year olds out loud for bedtime stories, which are about at my level... Lots of phonetic reading, relatively good comprehension, tons of laughter.

All week we've been running all the way through Giselle during the first half of the day, and then continuing to choreograph Kader's new ballet, La Reine Morte, after lunch.  We're in the theater tomorrow for staging and dress rehearsal, and then shows Saturday and Sunday.  I'll be back soon with pictures of the theater and news of how the shows go.  I spent a wonderful evening last night going to yoga again with Julian and Vanessa, and then dinner afterwards.  Because the yoga with the teacher they go to is very traditional, lots of holding poses for a long time while you do mental work and let your muscles sort themselves out, I can't help but feel I'm missing a fair amount by not being able to really understand what the teacher says.  I get the gist, but there are lots of little pieces (I can understand "elbow" but that doesn't really tell me what I'm supposed to be doing with said elbow) that escape me, and it's not really like flow where I can just follow along or look around, it's mostly internal work.  We'll see, as my French gets better it will be more worthwhile, I think.  Til then I have some yoga podcasts I'm excited about getting to try out.


I have had the strange sensation this week of watching shadows of myself living out the life I didn't choose...  Haunting the brick pathways of the quad and the 116th St. subway station on the Upper West Side is a mirage of what I would be doing now in this first week of classes, the people I would be with, the things I would be learning.  I ache, deeply, for my loves there, and for the inspired, articulate, loved self that exists there.  It's not regret though, I think that I did make the right choice -- I had a moment sitting on the floor in the side splits with my head propped up on my elbows today watching a section of Giselle and remembering that that isn't exactly how most people spend their work day -- and I'm not really sure I'd recognize regret if I was feeling it, it's not an emotion I'm particularly in tune with.  Being able to dance all day is just as much of a luxury as getting to spend all day learning about everything that interests me.  And this particular luxury isn't one I can return to later...  Being here, in this company, in this city, is an opportunity for me to grow in ways I can't envision yet.  There will be people here for me, experiences that will thrill me and shake me and inspire me.  And I will dance, dance beautiful works in historic theaters, and there is something magical about that chance.  I will get to see just what I can do with this instrument of mine, what beauty I can bring to this world of ours that is so often focused on the broken and the ugly.  Maybe it's alright to focus on making something perfect and whole and inclusive, for a little while at least.  For now, this can be my place.  It's new still, but I think I could get used to it.

yoga

I went with Julian to take a yoga class tonight, which felt absolutely splendid.  So nice to be back in a yoga studio, even if the type of yoga is different than what I've done before -- lots of holding poses and breathing exercises, so your body has time to adjust to each position and sort itself out before you move, not a lot of (read: any) flow -- the community and general philosophy is the same.  It's very different in French, with a lot more of my attention being captured by trying to understand the teacher, rather than focusing that energy inwards, but that will get easier as my French gets better.

Julian and I met up with Guillome, another dancer, for dinner afterwards, and turned around to find Estelle, yet another dancer, with a bunch of her friends, so we all got together at the base of a Cathar church for a wonderful evening of tapas and wine.  I'm much less funny in French, which is something I still need to get used to, mostly because my timing is all off with the trying to understand piece of things... Slowly slowly, my French is coming along though, which is exciting to watch.  Bonne soirée, mes amis, il y aura plus demain!