day 93

this cafe on schwedter str. in mitte is so über that is has no name. while I joke that things in paris are fabulous, berlin-nonchalance cannot be reproduced lightly...








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day 92

tonight was the final of the euro cup 08 (yep, that's a soccer game - I had to ask too) and we went to an old dis-used transmissions factory in prenzlauer berg to watch it: 800 german fans willing deutchland to be victorious over spain. alas, they lost...


the line to get into this exclusive venue and remanent of the past went around the block. they locked the gates two hours before it started and inside there was nothing but beer, chorizo and national spirit...

day 91

finally in berlin for a few days of inspiration...






I just love this city - it's so comforting. while it's large and unwieldy, it's also like a small town.
it's a city of contrasts and contradictions and scarring. and somehow it's captured my heart...

day 90

during a 12 hour transit in london en route to berlin...

day 89

an australian-looking building on rue des roisers in saint-ouen - just on the northern border of 'paris city'...

day 88

watching the tango in the building next door...

day 87

on rue des couronnes in belleville. the gates in front of the enormous apartment blocks here are quite specific - almost viciously beautiful...



walking along rue de belleville...

day 86

today I went to parc de bercy - a large park in the 12e. which is almost set up for strange pictures: rollerbladers skating on graffitied space-age ramps, a waterfall that looked like a contour map of a canyon (complete with dark-brown suds), an enormous sports stadium covered with grass at 45 degree angles, abandoned ping-pong tables with anti-US stickers on them, an entire vineyard in the centre and formal ponds thick with sludge being eaten by carp the size of my arm. strange and exciting was parc de bercy.

but when I came home flushed with the bizarreness (particularly of the grass-covered stadium) I realised that it couldn't be that easy: the 100 shots I'd taken today were inexplicably erased from the camera.

some days here are hard: the internet has mysterious ways, the bathrooms smell like a men's urinal, there has been a recent infestation of lice from the playgroup and the french like bureaucracy even more than the italians.
some days here are easy: the food, the culture, the art that is being generated at cité, the gentle connections and shifts in practice that are being made.

one thing is for sure - nothing much is my decision. which, for a choreographer, although welcome, certainly takes some getting used to...

day 85

some of craig waddel's (from australia) paintings while he's been at cité...

day 84

it's midsummer's night and fête de la musique when the city transforms into a carnival: every hole in the wall and cave underground has music playing. this is at L'Institut du Monde Arabe where everyone was getting down to the funky arabic tunes beneath the hovering cranes from next door...



french-arabic-style kebabs en route home...

day 83

dancing into the early hours at the annual micadanse party in our courtyard...

day 82

rue du rosiers, just after visiting mains d'Œuvres - a multi arts performance venue in the north of paris...

day 81

pierre (from south africa) used to be a painter and now creates works with tonal depth from a single medium. he's been working on this for 5 months and is creating shades and colours with different crochet stitches. when it's finished it will be hung in the middle of the space so you can walk around and see through it. he also embroiders photographs...








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day 80

building on rue moreau near opera bastille
one of the few new buildings in paris that doesn't look like it was built for the set of dr who...

day 79

juan melé is a painter from argentina, living in buenos-aires.
he told me he's been coming and working at cité each year for the last 20 years...

day 78

threatening to rain is a parisian habit this summer...

day 77

pétanque is a very serious game in france. the rules are simple but there are inevitably fights over the nuances of how they are enforced. the name apparently developed from 'Les Ped Tanco', which, in the southern occitan language means feet together.


while the game is taken very seriously, even more serious is the watching of the game. the luxembourg gardens is the perfect place to enjoy watching the professionals being watched...

day 76

prue (from australia) showing a draft of her new work at the CND studios. she is looking at the amount of energy performing can produce and the amount of energy needed to produce a performance...

day 75

katrin ströbel (from germany) is creating a trace of where she has been on every plastic bag she has bought: graffiti she transfers, signs or advertising that affect her or anything else she sees during her travels. every image she re-draws is either imported or exported from france and so the plastic bag is an obvious starting medium when discussing the transference of goods...

day 74

6am at theatre de la ville waiting for pina bausch tickets...



we waited 5 hours for a ticket, which seemed normal for my fellow parisian dance lovers: pina has the status of a rock idol here. isn't that a lovely thought? I was so elated after getting a ticket that it dispelled my usual cynicism and I metaphorically stag-jumped the whole way home...

day 73

every two weeks Mme. S from mali, exchanges our linen in our annex 15 foyer...

day 72

a dusk rock concert on the seine - taken from pont de la tournelle...

day 71

we came home from the country to see a german dance work, "das chrom und du" by düsseldorf collective neuer tanz: they unpacked hundreds of books, sang, moved, played the trumpet, walked, changed the records, took their tops off, put them back on and then packed the books back up again.
I liked it, then hated it, then liked it again... and it made me reflect on how harsh we are on our own dance - which is very often clever and well made. why are we more likely to love something average from europe than something really distinctive from home?





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day 70

fred's niece anaëlle on the river mayenne in the west of france...



and her gorgeous sister éléa...

day 69

saint michel has been built on an island with a massive tidal range (which can reach 15m), so during the day you can walk around it on the sand, but by 7.30 at night the car park is flooded. although there are more tourists here than at eurodisney, the inside (80m above the sea) is as spectacular as the outside...


during the 100 year war, this was the only place in northwestern france not to fall to the english...

day 68

les frigos: an old refrigeration building that was claimed by artists, is now owned by paris city, and where a friend and I went to visit one of the artist studios. during our visit we were both asked 'to sit' for an artist who does nudes. my friend has only been here for 48 hours and parisian clichés are already happening to her. it's taken me two months...

day 67

even in paris the mundane can encroach: in the cité lift with the weekly washing...



and then a quick visit to the louvre...

day 66

working after a long-weekend is always hard, so I re-arranged the studio (enlarge) to make it easier...

day 65

last day in burgundy started with having breakfast in dijon - the mustard capital of the universe - where we were seated next to this portly young man smoking up a storm and drinking beer at 9am. we were only envious for a short minute though as the day held mustard tasting poured on tap, medieval towns, an active abbey since the 8th C and perhaps some more wine tasting. some of my favourite things...

day 64

still in bugundy and after a morning strolling in between phesants with their feathers still on, cheeses by the truck load and meats that were unrecognisable, we decided to go to one of the famous wine caves.

while the english word cave is grotte in french, and the french word cave simply means cellar for us, the dampness, cobwebs and black widows guarding the entrances, meant these words clearly overlapped.
while the caves (and their owners) were freaky, the wine was delightful...