Goodbye to Europe!

The week has been great getting back into dancing mode again. Nikka and I have been taking ballet in the morning then I am off to Improv Composition and Partnering while Nikka goes to Horton and Ailey Rep (wowweee! Horton and Ailey? She must be crazy, right?) Molly then heads off to Feldenchrist, which I was very jealous of.

All and all, the intensive was an incredible experience. Just being able to dance with people from other parts of the world, and taking new classes has brought about some great discoveries about ourselves and our dancing. I even have pages of notes to prove it!


It is one more day left here and then it is bonvoyage, chow and auf Wiedersehen to Europe. Nikka moves on to Munich to see her foreign exchange student, then to Oslo to visit her sister, while Molly has a few more days by herself to enjoy the sites here in Vienna. I sadly do have to go home! It has been a great past few weeks and I can definitely say I enjoyed every minute of it. It was worth all of the confusing planning, the plane ticket, even the 30 hour travel day on various planes and trains to get here (lets just hope the way back goes a little smoother). Thanks everyone for following the blog and can't wait to see you all when I get home Saturday!

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After a very relaxing weekend we have began our 2nd week back at impuls. The weekend was fantastic; sleeping in, going to performances, site seeing, boating on the Danube River. There is so much I could say about the Marie Chouinard Performance, it was unlike anything I have ever seen. Ask me when I get home if you remember and you're interested. Saturday night we went out for a bit and did some salsa dancing which ended up being really fun! And, Sunday we soaked in the sun on the Danube and watched Capoeira dancers on the street.




Also, we couldn't help but dance everywhere we went so we thought we would document it. You can never go anywhere with dancers without busting into improvisation!

So, we are at day one again of class but I have a feeling it will be over faster then I know it. Only 4 days left here and then it's back to reality.

Week 1 done

Our week one at impuls tanz is over and we are needless to say that we are ready to enjoy the weekend off. It has been an exhausting, inspiring, rigorous, and challenging past few days and everything in between. We went from the beginning of our days finding our distal ends and moving from momentum without sensation in our Trisha respiratory class to our contemporary modern class with our Israeli teacher, Ori, where we learned to defy gravity and weight shift like nobody's business.

Last night we saw "P.A.R.T.S" perform, a company from Germany founded by Pina Bausch and now directed by Anna De Keersmaeker. And, if you don't know who those people are they are people to know. Beautiful performance. Left me speechless.


Tomorrow we plan on first and foremost sleeping in. Then, we are going into the actual downtown of Vienna to do some site seeing; hopefully some museums, swimming in the Danub if it's nice out, and going to see another show tomorrow evening.
More updates later. Hope everyone back home is doing well, miss you all!
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Day 1

Halo!
So it is our second day in Vienna and now we have Miss Molly Mingy in the mix. We met her today at our first day of the intensive. What a day! Nikka and I both had three classes today; Trisha Brown Repertory, Upside down right side up, and contemporary modern technique. All three classes were amazing, very rigorous. The studios are absolutely beautiful, probably about 3 or 4 times the size of the studios back home. There are dancers from all over the world, the U.S., Finland, Italy, Japan, Germany just to name a few. It is pretty funny telling people that we are from Wisconsin. All three of us are already sore and tired though so we're getting to bed early. Day two tomorrow. The battle begins 10 am.

Auf Wiedersehen

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Au Revoir!

Today we saw the Notre Dame, it was unbeleivable to see how old and historic that building is. We're off again tomorrow to Vienna. We had to leave a day early because the trains are all booked on Sunday! So, we have 14 hours of traveling again tomorrow. It will be nice to be in our own apartment to rest up before the intensive.

Au Revoir Paris!

Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, then shop to you drop!

Bonjour Friends!
So, it is our 3rd day in Paris and we have been on the move every day all day. We surprisingly found the metro fairly well from our hostel,after only about a half hour of walking when it should have taken about 15. We struggled to use our broken french to communicate to strangers. Yesterday we traveled to the Eiffel Tower taking hourly detours to shop in every boutique we saw. The fashion here is so inspiring and unique!

Art surrounds us. Break dancers under the Eiffel Tower. Musicians in the subways. Soccer players performing tricks to music. We decided to add a spice of our own culture by improvising in the grass in front of the Eiffel Tower. We might have drawn some attention to ourselves, but we turned out with some great pictures! haha.

We started our day this morning with a workout in the tiny dorm room upon sheets laid out to cover the dirty floor, and did our Ed Burgess/Simone Ferro workout. Nikka instructed me to do 30 reps of each exercise. She demanded.
10 hours later after walking miles, it felt like our backs were breaking and our feet were about to fall off. Sandals were a bad choice.

Soon there after, we hopped on the metro to the Louvre only to get distracted by 2 shops this time and checking the opera for ballets. Unfortunately, the ballet does not perform during the summer. The Louvre was beautiful. The Mona Lisa, sculptures by Michelangelo, and the Egyptian Sphinx were few of the many attractions we were delighted to see. We proceeded to walk down the Champ Elysee to see the Arch De Triumph and admire the overpriced designer stores where we long to indulge ourselves in.

That's about it for now!