So many things have happened since my last
post! Hopefully I can remember it all!
Last Wednesday was the Madonna del Conforto
festival in Arezzo. I’m not quite sure of the entire story behind the
festival/holiday, but it basically celebrates Arezzo’s personal Madonna. For
the entire day, the main church would be open for worshipers and interested
travelers, and vendors would sell candy on the street outside. Unfortunately,
the dancers had class without break until late in the day, and, after that, I
had rehearsal for cabaret to go to. By the time everything was over, it was
around 10pm. Luckily, my roommate was also interested in going (and the church
was still open) so we headed out.
And I’m so glad we did. The inside of the
church was incredibly beautiful with many beautiful paintings and statues and extremely
high ceilings covered in frescos. There were just too many things to look at
and admire! To add to the beauty, mass was going on while we were there,
filling the air with song.
I must admit, I felt awkward taking pictures while
people were worshiping, but there was a lot of other people just walking around
and admiring the church and a camera crew was filming the event. So, in the
end, I didn’t feel too guilty.
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| Candy vendors outside the Doumo. |
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| One of the alters in the church. |
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| Inside the church. |
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| Ceiling of the church. |
On Thursday, the mfa students, the actors,
and the dancers all had a four-hour contact improv class together. It was
amazing and so much fun! The teacher was German, but had lived long enough in
England to have a British accent to his English. However, the German was
definitely still there below it all, so the end result sounded slightly Irish.
He was very nice and incredibly talented, as shown by the many improvs he did
with students where he would either create really interesting movements or
would easily guide the students through complex lifts.
The class began by exploring our own bodies.
We did a lot of walking around, stretching or isolations, and then more walking
around to see what changed types of exercises. Some of my favorites included
crossing one leg in front of the other and then moving your hips and sitting on
the floor in double attitude and moving your pelvis. Both were really wonderful
stretches that left my hips feeling really free.
Eventually we moved into partner work. The
first exercise just involved stopping someone by putting your hand on his or
her head and then guiding them to the floor and back. This had no specific
partner and we just all wandered from one partner to the next. We then did
choose partners (I was paired with Rowan, an mfa student), and we did and
exercise where one (or both) of the partners had to be sliding against the
other using a random body part. This ended up being really enjoyable, and Rowan
and I found many interesting ways of staying connected. The next partner
exercise began as self-exploration involving back isolations. After moving
around on our own for a bit while our partner observed, they would then place
their hands on your back as you moved. After doing that for a while, they would
then start guiding you with their hands and, eventually, the guided would be
allowed to resist the hands as well. I had a little trouble guiding my partner,
but being guided was really interesting, and I absolutely loved when we were
allowed to guide and be guided randomly by our choice. My partner (Taylan, an
mfa student from Turkey) and I ended up just clicking in terms of movement, so
we were able to really explore the movements and to do some interesting lifts
and weight sharing. After that, we all worked on balancing and then being moved
out of that balance (by lifts or guiding) by a partner. I ended up with Mimi,
but it wasn’t the best partnership since I was doing really badly finding where
I could lift Mimi out of those balances and Mimi was having problems with finding
comfortable balances.
After that, I partnered with Arthur to work on how to get
into a specific lift. Arthur was really surprised with how high I was able to
get him! (Even though I don’t have phenomenal upper body strength, I can lift
people heavier than me if I get them in the right position). Overall, it was a
great class, and I’m excited for us to have it again.
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| Arthur lifting me |
On Friday, we had our cabaret show. For it, I
re-did the solo I used for my audition to the Accademia program. The other
students that came up with acts were my roommate (who sang a song she wrote and
that I love), two of the other dancers did a hip-hop and ballet fusion dance,
and Jake and Seth gave a performance of some poetry Jake had wrote (it was
about fruit and it was hilarious). To add to that, our student orchestra came
up with a hobo theme for the show and had many musical numbers and little
transitional skits to fill in the space between the acts. Overall, the show
went really well (though I accidentally switched my choreography from the right
to the left side for a bit in the middle) and was fun to watch.
Organizing it however, was less than fun. All
of the students with acts had entered the cabaret thinking that the performance
was meant to show their acts with the orchestra providing music when asked for
or to fill in time. In reality, it was organized so that our acts would be
inserted into the hobo story line, which sometimes didn’t work so well (the
dances just didn’t fit into that world at all). However, I think what really bothered
us was how much we were told we were going to have to modify our already
finished acts to suit the hobo story line. Luckily, the time constraints
allowed everyone to just do what they had planned to do and the show ended up
looking fine as is.
AND THEN WE HAD PROM! :D
The events team for this week had decided
that the Accademia was in need for a Prom and had sent out invitations earlier
that week. Everyone (and I mean everyone! The mfa students, G. Ben, my Italian
teacher, and all of the students in the program ended up coming) came dressed
to the nines and the night was spent dancing to everything from Lady Gaga to
Wham!’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go.” I had a great time dancing, chatting
with the mfa students (Taylan kept a running joke with me of how long I could
keep dancing at a high energy level before crashing—I ended up winning that
conversation since I kept going for over 3 hours!), and watching my Italian
teacher be awkward. It was a fantastic night.
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| Piazza del Campo
From there, we
eventually wandered over to the Nuovo Duomo, which ended up being amazing. We
originally decided to just go into the cathedral since it was only 3 euro. If I
had thought that the church in Arezzo was overwhelming, this cathedral clearly
proved me wrong. On top of having many paintings and statues, there were a ton
of well-preserved mosaics on the floor, the ceiling was painted and carved in
many interesting ways, and there were a ton of amazing side rooms to explore.
Nuovo Duomo
Mosaic in Nuovo Duomo
My favorite ended up being this room that was completely covered in wall and
ceiling frescos and which held very big and old pages from what looked like
music books. Each page was painted with flowers, pictures, and ornate letters
and it was all I could do to drag myself away from the pages.
The library room in the Nuovo Duomo
However, Sophie
convinced me to after Nick and I bumped into her. She said that the panorama
connected to the cathedral was really worth seeing—and closing soon. So we ran
over to the ticket office and made it just in time to be among the last to go
up. And, just like in Florence, the view was amazing.
Me, enjoying the view
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After basking in the glow of sunset and a
beautiful view, Nick and I returned to exploring. We ended up finding a lot of
interesting old buildings, including a synagogue (which was unfortunately
closed since it was Saturday) and a music school, an amazing gelateria, and a
bookstore.
After dinner we chilled in the main piazza
until the rest of the group arrived for the performance as well. For a while,
it was looking like no one else was coming so we went looking for people only
to find them back at the piazza where we started. We then had another silly
moment trying to locate the theater. No one knew where it was except that it
was on the piazza, and we couldn’t see anything looking like a theater. Then
Nick and I remembered the poster for the show we saw in the building next to
the tower. Apparently that was the entrance to the theater!
So we all went in and saw the show. I ended
up in a side booth that made it difficult to watch the show, but the view
wasn’t too bad and the show was very entertaining. It was four men (though at
first we thought there were five performers) playing scenes about the
inhabitants of a nursing home and about a group of very young children. All of
the scenes where done with no dialogue and all of the actors wore large masks.
Although the story lines weren’t that impressive, the physicality was. For
example, in the children scenes, one of the actors played and baby and mimicked
the movements perfectly. Over all, it was a really impressive show.
Unfortunately, by the time the show was over,
I had a massive migraine. To add to that bad luck, our departure from Siena was
delayed since no one knew where charter bus we were taking back was. However,
due to really nice people in our group (Gen gave me some advil and Nick let me
lean against him, as opposed to the bumpy window, so that I could sleep and let
the meds kick in), I got back to the villa feeling much better.
On Sunday, I ended up getting up in time to
go with a group into Arezzo to find Gianni’s (the head of the dance program)
pastry shop. By the time we arrived, he was no longer there. Even so, all of
the workers in the shop were excited to see us (including Gianni’s sister) and
we ended up chatting with them for a bit.
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| The pastries I bought |
The pastries I bought tasted wonderful and
were amazingly cheap. I bought two large pastries for 1.80 eruos! I can’t wait
to go back next weekend and eat some more.
After that wonderful brunch, the group
decided to explore Arezzo a bit until lunch. We ended up finding the Piazza
Grande where we stayed for a bit taking pictures and playing around. Since the Piazza
is on a slope and there was still some snow/ice on it, some of the guys thought
it would be a good idea to run and then slide down it. Luckily no one got hurt,
but it was hilarious watching them be so ungraceful. (Best moment: Tim said, “Don’t
worry. We have our pelvises under us” and then slipped and fell on his butt.).
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| Piazza Grande |
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| Roy and Tim sliding down the piazza |
Sometime after that, we went to lunch at a
different kebab place than my usual. The sandwich I got wasn’t as good as the
first kebab place, but they put fries in this sandwich so it still really tasted
good.
So that was my week/weekend and Venice is
late this week! Lots to talk about later, eh?
Ciao!
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