Fun Flat Times

So. My flat has been getting a little goofy recently. Oddly we've all been home at the same time recently, which usually never happens. Last night we had a late supper together (read: most of us had eaten, but Latana had made a casserole and wanted to fatten us all up, so we all ate some more!) and had a lovely chat. Tonight Latana came home tired and a bit depressed, so I taught her two of my tiny tots songs that involve much dancing around.

We got a little bit rowdy and started accidentally knocking stuff off of the shelves by jumping up and down too hard. Moises got involved and we were all laughing so hard that Ella turned red and almost missed an important call she had to take.

Awesome.

Catch up number whatever.

I nicked this picture off of facebook- it is Jon, Me, Rupert, Kate, and Tara jamming in the great hall of Kinnersley the day we left. Look at all that sunshine! In England!

I carry a lot of notebooks around with me. I realized this when I switched from my backpack to a smaller bag in order to go to a show this Saturday. My "pared down" bunch of notebooks included my green Artist's Way notebook, a book of manuscript paper, my calendar, my research project note book where I write down what I'm thinking about/looking up for my IPE, a small black moleskin, and two spiral bound class notebooks- a black one that is full but that I refer to frequently, and a hot pink one that is ready for more notes. So- real quick, that is 7 notebooks.

Ridiculous.

And that isn't even including the books that I carry around with me in case I might need to look something up/have a second to read and learn new stuff, and the scores for the LCDS project (one of which is 50 pages long! Why?!) Whew. It's a lot of paper.

This week I went to two performances- Complicite and Resolution! 2009.

Complicite is a theatre group that I am very interested in- they devise most of their plays as a company and use lots of mime and multimedia stuff. It is interesting- sometimes they get a bit too clever with what they are doing and it takes away from the story- but most of the time they manage to have incredibly powerful productions. This one, Shun-kin, had a main character that was a puppet.

I just meant to go find out when there were student tickets available but then it turned out that there were 6 pound tickets for that night and it seemed a foolish thing to miss. I was also pleased because I managed to get to Waitrose right as they were marking down all the sandwiches so I had dinner for 70p, and was patting myself on the back for doing something fun so frugally- but then I bought an audio CD of a past performance and a book of plays that they had written so that sort of shot that all to hell.

On Saturday I went to Contact Improv again. So much fun! I think one of my favorite parts is finding out where I am going to injure myself each time. The first time I threw out my left shoulder, the second time I scraped the skin off my right big toe, and this time I overextended my right hip. I'm not being facetious, I get a big kick out it. Remember Laine counting her bruises after ice skating? Same thing. It's also fun to find out where I'm going to hurt for the next three days- each session a different set of muscles I didn't know I had make themselves known. This time it is a band around my ribs, right under my shoulder blades.

At dance class I picked up a flier for a performance at the LCDS that night that involved 6 improvising dancers and 1 musician. So I pretty much had to go, right?

It turns out that Resolution! (as far as I can tell) is an annual festival of new choreographers work from the London Contemporary Dance School. There were three pieces on that night and a HUGE crowd. The improvised one was by far the best and was also a hoot. It was interesting/strange that the most comfortable, relaxed, confident performance was improvised rather than strictly rehearsed and choreographed.

"Fridays are Tough" or "Yay for Lunch!"

This morning was a struggle to get out of bed. I don't know if you've noticed this, but I've been quite busy recently and tired to the point of titling posts "tired." Also, I had lost my notebook, which was a great concern as it is full of important information, yet doesn't have my name on it. So I was worried, and tired, and *maybe* a bit cranky.

Then our tutor didn't show up. Which was terrible because it was supposed to be Pete Churchill who in addition to being one of the most amazing musicians in the world to work with, is also leaving the school after this term- so we were all really eager for his lesson. Alas, we suspect that he was never told that he had a lesson with us.

So this morning was crap. We sat like lumps in a windowless room and discussed an in house performance that we are going to do on Dec. 13th. I volunteered to play Poucha Dass because it is a great piece, and it will force me to actually practice (which is a good thing indeed.)

We thought that since we are supposed to be doing a performance, we might as well write something to perform rather than getting on stage and sitting like lumps the way we were doing. Nick and Jorge started up some samba rhythms and we practiced improvising over the chords that Nick was playing.

Man-oh-man was I not feeling it. Eventually I gave up and put the bass down and started doing some samba based body percussion with Jorge, but then my chest got all painful where I was slapping it so I tried singing along Kate and Caroline's little melody and yeah, still wasn't feeling it. Also, I was really worried about my notebook.

Lunch was a welcome, welcome break- since we had no tutor and were being good productive students anyway, we decided to take an hour and a half, which was perfect. (Okay, by the time we got back to work it was like two hours, but still.) A break and food and a bunch of emailing had made me feel much better so after lunch I bounded in to the room and played some riffs from Poucha Dass which spontaneously spouted a marvelous free improvisation that lasted over half an hour. It was totally clicking and grooving along and there is nothing better than that.

Emma had done some really neat electronics stuff during the free improv so we decided to record each of us to do some extended techniques on our instruments for her to sample. It was handy to hear what everyone else was coming up with too- since we had absolutely no guidance nor supervision we went a little nuts: playing the oboe into the tuba? Why not, it might sound cool! (It did, it was also LOUD)

When it was my turn I was thinking about doing some tapping on the side of the bass, but since we had a real live percussionist in the room I made Jorge come over and use the bass as a drum, and that sounded great so I tried to do a bass line at the same time.

I think we're on to something here. Kate got up and started dancing and that then was the starting point of our next free improvisation. (Um, the bass/drum- not the dancing. Though now that I think of it we could use her dancing....) Jorge and I need to work a bit more on it because as it is the bass is moving a bit too much for me to be able to be terribly in tune or accurate about what I'm doing- but I think with a little practice it could end up being kind of awesome. We could get Tara or Heather to do something with the bow as well...

So now we're all excited about our ideas for the Dec. 13 piece and hopefully we'll be able to convince Nathan to let us work on them and flesh them out into an actual structure during our creative ensemble classes on Thursdays.

I've been researching how to put audio files on to the blog, so if this all works out- I'll put the performance up online...nice, huh?

Contra dancing

Time Out is my new favorite publication. Mostly because they included "English Country Dancing Cecil Sharp House, NW1 7:30pm" under events for yesterday. And it was bunches of fun. Every Thursday they have what is basically a beginners dance session, except that there are totally regulars who come every week and are really good. I got there late, because although The A-Z has all the streets, it doesn't tell you which way the numbers go, so I started out on the wrong end of Regent's Park Road and ended up having to walk down the entire length of it, which really was fine because it is a gorgeous street (although maybe a few to many pastel houses) and a lovely night out.

Right, so I got there late, and I had some trouble figuring out where to go because the place was empty on the main floor, but I found someone to tell me to go down to the basement and there I found two different dances going on. I wasn't sure if I should just go in or not, you know, how formal was it? So I took a chance and went in and sat down next to the one person who wasn't dancing. She turned out to be a highschooler named Katie who was there with her friends and one of her friend's dad (who turned out to be from Cincinnati) and it was her first time too, so we figured out how it worked together, and then I contra danced for the rest of the night. yay!

There was this Chinese woman there named Xiaorui Wu. She is working on a degree in ethnomusicology and was there for part of a project, we traded e-mail addresses. She is the Asian one in the picture. During the tea break I met and chatted with Lara and Laura from Australia (there were a bunch of foreigners, I don' t have an explanation for that except that both Lara and I found out about the event from Time Out, hence my earlier statement. Lara is the tall one, Laura is the shorter one.)

After the tea break we sang happy birthday to the leader of the band and danced some more. There were about 30 people there all told, and a pretty wide range of ages as well. One of the sprightliest ladies had turned 80 two weeks before. She was great fun. There was also, somewhat surprisingly, a good ratio of men to women, which meant that it was much easier to tell if you were in completely the wrong place since the genders were actually accurate.

At the end of the dance Laura and Lara invited me out for dinner, so we wandered around the neighborhood trying to find somewhere the was open for food. (We ended up having a street dancing moment outside of a pub that had a jazz band, but no food) We eventually found this Greek restaurant that I don't remember the name of, but it was very good. We split a bunch of appetizers and generally had a grand old time. Lara is a somewhat classically trained violinist, she played with the band for the second half of the dance, and she is really interested in early music. (She went a little nuts when she found out that I play gamba, it was satisfying.) So we exchanged contact information and hopefully will have a chance to get together again before we both leave. (She is taking a job with a youth hostel in the Lakes district starting on the 21st.) So yeah, I had a great night.

Also, Peter has e-mailed me back. He is actually going to be in London on the 18th, so we have to get our visiting in on Monday. He also says that he has whipped the orchestra in to shape (they are, apparently, "fab" now) and so will be getting me a ticket for Tuesday. I'm excited.