Oh the Dancing!

Welcome back to blog-land, me! As of November 7, my Italian tour started in earnest, and as some of you may have realized, I have had difficulties keeping up with my blog. So now I find myself with so many things to share, but not quite sure how to go about it. Bear with me while I do a little self-organized catch-up.

So first, the tour…..

Here’s a glance at my performances:

Nov 7: Teatro Comunale dell’Academia, Tuoro sul Trasimeno

Nov 8: Palazzo Leto, Spoleto

Nov 14: Teatro Comunale, Città della Pieve

Nov 21: Teatro Petrella, Longiano

Dec 2: CRT Teatro, Milan (Short Formats Festival X Edizione)

Dec 5: La Fortezza, Campello sul Clitunno

Dec 6: Teatro Subasio, Spello

We returned from Milano late last night, and tomorrow we drive to Campello sul Clitunno, where I will perform in an old church. On Sunday, we head to Spello for the final performance of my Italian tour.

Ummm…. Did I say closets and bathrooms? Well, it turns out I meant theatres and palaces….

Who knew? Not me, obviously.

On Saturday, November 7, I performed at the Teatro Comunale dell’Academia in Tuoro sul Trasimeno (my hometown), at a big festa Deja Donne threw to celebrate the end of the Glimpse of Hope tour.

The other dancers reprised the installation/performance they created for Cagliari, Simone’s super talented friend Andrea Bartola had a comedy/music set, and this amazing woman, Rosetta Martellini brought her “juke-box di poesia” where she recites selections of poetry and prose through a device that is somehow a cross between an octopus, gas mask, and old fashioned telephone. It’s beautiful – you make a selection from a directory that looks a lot like a karaoke index, then she reads it for you, dramatically, through a set of tubes that you hold to your ears. It is arrestingly intimate; her voice felt like it appeared inside my body - quiet but clear whispers of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Italian. http://www.rosettamartellini.it/pio_bove.htm

Then on Sunday morning, Lenka, Cesere, and I loaded up the van and drove to Spoleto, where I performed in a room in the Palazzo Leti.

Over the course of seven hours, we transformed an empty room in this palace into a beautifully intimate performance space.

The performance was part of a festival celebrating various foods native to Italy, so after I danced, we went next door to enjoy wine and various dishes created from chestnuts – everything from savory to sweet – and created especially for this event. Delicious.

I’d like to take a moment to talk about chestnuts. I love them. I had no idea I loved them. My only reference prior to this trip was a dirty joke based on the song “Chestnuts Roasting O’er an Open Fire.” But they really DO roast chestnuts over an open fire. And wow are they delicious. Why have I never had chestnuts before?? Do they not grow in the south?? Southern USA, that is.

The following week we drove to Citta’ Della Pieve, and I walked into the most beautiful little theatre I think I have ever seen.

According to Lenka, it is a very traditional Italian theatre, which means that the stage is much higher than the floor seats of the audience, with boxes all around. What this also means is that the stage is, by necessity, raked, aka slanted. This particular theatre wasn’t so bad – the angle was around 2%. But I soon discovered ‘not so bad’ is completely relative. For me, it was bad – horrifying in fact.

Well, ok, maybe I am being a bit dramatic, but still, performing is difficult enough as it is, without having to climb uphill. Thankfully, I was able to rehearse a few times, but in the end, the dancing was an act of faith. Like Simone said, you just have to go for it – fully – and trust that your body will know what to do.

(To all my former students to whom I have said, “Dancing should not be an act of faith, but rather skill and technique,” I amend myself. Dancing can succeed as an act of faith, but only after the knowing and the doing are so deeply embedded that when you let go, the memory is strong enough to carry you through.

So the next week, I found myself in Longiano, in the Teatro Petrella.

We arrived the night before the performance and stayed in the apartments owned by the theatre. It was really beautiful. This theatre is able to host residencies for companies to create new work because they can provide lodging on site. Lenka was not able to come with me because she had family arriving from Prague to help pick olives from their land. Cesere was also unavailable, due to another engagement, so I found myself with a totally new crew:

Elisa (production assistant), Giovanni (her boyfriend), and Luca, technical specialist extraordinaire. (Here are Elisa and Luca)

Though we hit some rough patches, everything worked out in the end, and Luca designed some beautiful lights for Jeanine’s piece. Of course, the angle of the stage was 5% (!!!*#$^), but by now, I had had practice J.

After the show Giovanni drove us back to Perugia, and I spent the following day with Elisa and Giovanni, walking around Perugia, and eating a beautiful Sunday lunch, complete with special desserts. The eating here….

There is a university for foreigners in Perugia, and they offer various Italian language courses. I think I would like to come back and do a three month course next year…. My Italian has been improving steadily, and I have actually had a few real conversations – with gestures of course. But still! What’s funny is that my friend Barbara told me that I don’t sound like an American when I speak, but rather I have a Korean accent when I speak Italian – how is this possible??

After Longiano I had 10 days free before Milano, so I was finally able to make some small trips. I will get to those later. But for now, I’ll wrap up this episode with our trip to Milano. Lenka and I left Tuoro at 6:45a on Wednesday and after four hours on the train, arrived at the CRT Teatro. We were invited to participate in the Short Formats Festival, X Edizione, and this is by far the most professional gig of the tour. And of course, it happened quite at the last minute. When we were in Cagilari, Simone received an invitation, and luckily I was here, and we had a 25-minute performance ready and available. I was able to do it simply because I was in the right place at the right time. I LOVE it when that happens.

There were performances happening all over the theatre, in various spaces. I performed twice, and it was great. The audiences were fantastic, and by good fortune, Barbara Schroer, the video artist, who lives in Rome, is currently in Milan with her son Viktor while her partner Pietro works with a local theatre company, so she was able to be there for the performance. It was really nice to have the whole team together for this festival. (I brought Lenka and Simone to Texas for the premiere of the work, but Barbara was unable to come because she had just, and I mean just, given birth to Viktor).

So now we only have two shows left. It is very hard to believe that my time here is coming to an end… in fact, I find that I don’t want to talk about it….

So, stay tuned for my adventures in Rome, Florence, Naples and Pompeii!!

Ciao!!