Grenoble Sun 15 March  ARRIVAL 

How do I arrive? How does it feel to come to a new place, to a new city or a town or to a new room? How to find a way from the station to a right address and a right door? After having settled down a bit, how to go out for a walk and find a restaurant. How to pick a right direction? 

 How many times have I been in this kind of situation in my life already? How fast can a sense of home or homeliness be established? How quickly I´m getting to know new people and start calling them friends? How long does it take to learn the names of the nearest streets or a short cut to the centre?

 I have not been so near the Alps for many years. The architecture of the city is so different from the architecture of Helsinki. For some reason I keep getting a feeling like I was visiting a fairytale even there are signs of contemporary time and reality everywhere (What is time and reality anyway?)

“The first evening feeling” - there is still so much new to come. I can feel tiredness in my body as kind of numbness. I also notice a nervous feeling on the background of my thinking. How am I as a teacher or an artist in another country - this time - how will I be here in France? Is there a difference? In me? Isn´t this what this LEAP- TAB teaching across borders is also about? These questions...

 Improvisation and movement exploration, sensitivity and listening and surprise; where and how are these things landing now in me? How am I tuning into this coming week´s classes? What kind of exchange will there be? Am I ready for an exchange? Or a surprise?

 Can anything be enough? What would´t be enough? For me? What about this gesture (I look down with my eyes) or this movement (my fingers move on the keyboard) or these thoughts?

 Mon 16 March

 Towards moving thinking:  Each day we will start with movement exploration as a way to root yourself into your own moving and a warm up to improvisation. Questions we will play with: How do you articulate or (re)search the unknown? How to extend and when to extend with the material what occurs in a solo, duet or a group improvisation. Is there a way to support a surprise? How would you do that? 

The first day of teaching is often more difficult for me than other  days. I guess it has more to do with shyness (in general) than with being very unsure about my own teaching.  How could I as a teacher of improvisation take the first class-situation more like a practice of improvisation? After all these years?  

I wonder how other teachers experience the first day. In some way I feel pity for those who come to my class only once (on the first day) and decide not to come anymore - I´m almost sure the next day would be better and easier for the participants too. Should I say to the participants that what ever happens they should come the next day too, and then they don´t have to come ever again?

 The first impressions, first thoughts, first words - how much do they tell of anything? Everything? - That feels so heavy. The first and the worst - sound quite similar. Love at a first sight - how is that ever possible? Or expected?

 To the actual teaching: The participants in a class were nice and friendly. For some people the long start on a floor in a studio which was not (yet) warm caused some frustration but once we got going people got warmer. 

 During lunchtime I was back in my room and made a google search on “a shy teacher” and came up with a lot of stories and examples. Also suggestions how to get rid off the shyness..

 Later in the afternoon I go back to the studio to work on my own: I  find myself in nowhere. There is  a sense of push in me,  a sense of something that I should and I should´t… A sense of conflict  and a sense of criticism. I´m in France now! This should not be about shyness or the worst moments! 

Tuesday 17 March

Morning cereals and coffee, writing and planning. Glancing at the blue sky through the roof window. Less despair more presence. Checking things on Facebook, stopping to read an article about “ holding space for others”. To be able to hold space for others you need to let go of your ego. I connect to that advice and feel a bit silly with all that despair and shyness on the previous day. My thoughts keep pondering around improvisation. From the videos I watched in the evening I still remember Simone Forti and how to play with your impulses -  Jennifer Monson and her wildness. 

How do I welcome different impulses? And what choices do I make - do I notice the value systems and thinking behind my choice making actions? What would I call wild? Or free? How do I teach improvisation? Is there any freedom in that? Is freedom the thing one needs?

 During last months I have been going through a change in the way I teach or approach the teaching of improvisation. I used to stick more to an idea of space, time and dialogues of moving people and how these things keep changing constantly and can be looked at with some shared parameters or compositional ideas (space, directions, timing, distance, front and back) connected to an idea of a stage (and performance).

I have a strong (gut) feeling  that those parameters or ways to look at the improvisation are not necessarily so relevant anymore. I think they are based more or less with a quite traditional idea of a stage with audience watching from one or maximum two sides. Once you start working site specific or in other spaces/contexts than stage-like spaces very different ways to perceive spatiality and dialogue between the dancers and audience (all being participants in that situation) open up. Most importantly the contexts can be so different now-a-days that there is no use to base some roots on the staged improvisation.

 I have a feeling I have to finally let go of the idea of a stage and also of the tools to improvise on stage despite the fact that those tools for stage can be applied many ways to different situations and contexts. Locating dance and improvisation on stage as a starting point or a point of reference seems to have lost its relevance. Or maybe I just I need to let go of it in order to find my way back to it. 

 I decided to take some questions to the class: Where do you place or locate the dance (in your thinking). You can think you are on the stage (and behave like it) even you are on the streets ( but you could place yourself somewhere else too.) How aware are you of the locating of  your own dance/dancing?Where are you dancing when you are dancing?

About the actual teaching: We started the class with me showing the first five minutes of the video About to Dance - Swing of politics in which Finnish politicians answer to my questions by moving/ with a movement. That video leads easily into a talk about habitual (routine like) ways of locating dance somewhere in our own thinking. For example some male politicians in the video located dance and moving to a football field in their thinking and then executed their moving answers like being on a football field or a football game (even they were in the street or on the stairs of the house of Parliament).  

It was nice and fruitful to hear comments from the participants of the class. The watching of the video and the comments also made some impact to the class. 

 Wed 18 March, morning

From the actual teaching: We started with the exercise watching - listening (eyes closed) - moving and after that went on for 10 minutes finding ourselves moving across space and opening to different moving dialogues. 

 We did an exercise with a partner. One is a mover and the other one is touching the mover (who is in stillness) to 3 different places on the body. The mover moves after the touches and then comes to a new stillness. The hand person touches again on 3 different places and the mover moves again.  A thought that supports the working is a the idea of “not ignoring the touch”. How to stay aware of the touch on both roles. (Breath to it, open to it…)

After both have done both roles we continued working with space/the room aiming to find similar kind of breathing, concentration and accuracy that was happening during the previous 3 touches and move -exercise.

We ended with an open improvisation with some rules. (Some people moving some observing and changing turns).

 After the class one of the participants invited me to a lunch at her garden and for a long and beautiful walk by the mountains. We talked hours and hours about dance, art and life. I came back to Grenoble in the early evening.

 Thursday 19, after the class

About the class: we started like all other mornings: “from lying and breathing on the floor to the arrivals and departures to softening and yielding to pushing to the play with horizontal and vertical to activating hands and feet…”

We worked more deeper with finding the upper body - lower body connection and how to activate the support of the upper body so that the lower body (legs and feet) can be active, articulative and playful.  We did an exercise starting with one person sitting on the floor the other one is is lying behind the sitting person and puts his/her feet on the other one´s back gently. I often call that exercise “Feet on the back with a development to a coffee cup is spilling”. I have noticed that with that exercise, especially when it comes to the last part (the coffee cup spilling) I often act like a kind of a team coach who keeps shouting and thinking that the shouting would help. “Let the upper body help the lower body! Use the hands, use the upper body, that makes it easier to the legs and feet to articulate and do different things! Don´t freeze with the upper body - you can do move onto your sides!”. 

Time has gone quickly. There is only one more morning class left to teach. I have a feeling of having found some common ground with the participants. It has become easier to choose exercises and tasks, also to demonstrate them. 

Fri 20 March

Morning. Before the class. Just now I have been thinking of that how to teach from or with the mind of a dancer? How is that or how would that be? How connected is that with the basic idea of being a human being- being a citizen, being European, being a mother, being 46 years old?

 How strongly do I think that as a Finnish person, because Finland as a country is not really central but rather far "away from centers," I have less to say or less to give as an artist or a teacher than a teacher from another country which in some sense is more central? Why is that? Do different countries have a different value? Based on what?How much do I judge my broken (not native) English or at least  this strong accent and my simple vocabulary? How much is that idea educated in the Finnish schooling system. ( Idid my dance studies in Amsterdam- SNDO, here I mean more the socialisation and education from the yearly years until adulthood)

 About the actual teaching:  Once coming up from the floor we changed the focus to the spine (a duet with your spine). After a shaking of the bones of the other and moving from it. Moving alone and in duets. Ending with duets watching other duets. I participated in the exercises (like I had participated in all the other mornings too). We did most of the talkings in small groups but came together to end the week.

 In general I have a feeling that there was a common interest in the exploring moving and movement. It was not something that would have needed a lot of time to explain and or I should have had proofs. Two hours went very quickly. I made a personal decision of using the time more or less on moving and not so much on talking. We always finished with a circle with short comments and sometimes we talked in between the tasks/exercices.

Sat 21 March (before leaving Grenoble)

Funny, yesterday after having confessed that sometimes I have a feeling of not being enough as a teacher with my broken Finnish-English someone told me that for her as a French person it is sometimes easier to understand this simple English spoken with a Finnish accent than when someone speaks fluent and quick English.  I was caught up with my own judging/value systems and expectations.

I wonder how much there are these values, expectations and rules not linked to the moving and dancing which still strongly influence the class situation itself. It is more like a rhetorical question for one can´t really step out from the being influenced by the surrounding cultures, past and present. The only problem that can cause is how much we take things as “the only truth”  without being aware of how our opinions, expectations and choices are being formed and embodied. How much this that I sometimes make myself smaller because of my not fluent English has an influence with all other things I teach in the class? 

I´m bringing these up mainly due to my background - I studied sociology and sociology of art as passionately as a hobby the last decade in the University of Eastern Finland. I  remember having read French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu bringing up how language and the skills in articulating your thoughts in words had an effect. There had been TV- talks in which French farmers were brought up to talk with people with experience in talking in talk shows. The people with skills in talking got more time to talk from the talkshow host than the farmers who were not that skilled with that kind of articulative speech-form even maybe the farmers had more knowledge of the subject that was talked about. 

 Some thoughts or questions in general (things that I have been thinking during this week or past months.  It is different to think about or to come back to these thoughts and questions in different times - like now when I´m 46 and not 26 or 36 years old...

- It is important to create a frame that is loose enough for the movers to find and make research on their own movement. 

- It is always fruitful to find many different ways to exchange and have dialogue with others ( worth trying)

- It is good to learn or become aware of one´s own ways (habits) of learning and receiving information.

- What are my most common expectations in relation to dance and movement? What are my most hidden expectations relating to dance, to improvisation? Have I noticed them yet - if so, have they changed with time?

 - When is the idea or a thought that I teach things I´d like to be taught to myself, good and supportive?

- Do I feel loyal to something or somebody?

- Is there something that disturbs or distracts me from being the mover, the dancer, the artist, the teacher, the participant I want to be? What is that more precisely? Why, do I think, that distraction is there? Do I, or someone else need it? 

- What is queer?

- What is dance for me? Does that change? With time - on a daily or weekly basis, with age or with experience. 

- How do I embody dignity and responsibility? to myself, to other people, to the environment, society? Now!