Monday 19 March 2012

Focus in Singapore!


One tour ends, another begins

Got back from France two days ago.  I think I haven't really realised that the first leg of the creation of Focus is over.  I am still waking up at 4 am with my body trying to remain on french time, still thinking about the choreography. About jumping into Ole's car and heading for the studios at the Pole Culturel Camille Claudel.  Thinking what I'd like to fix for dinner for Ole and Jereh, our SM Lise and our landlady Mireille.


It all happened so fast.
 
2 March, Sorgues/Avignon, les Hivernales. Premiere in a thick cloud of pea fog, in the familiar black box of our residency with the audience on a steep rake and scalding showers backstage. A final curtain call with Cie Stylistik (the other half of the double bill) among their field of Laotian straw hats.


3 March. Pile into car at 730am to hit the road for Toulouse.  Focus was an entirely different show in the huge square of the Place du Capitole. We danced in the chilly wind, practically in the laps of the bemused crowd, the marketplace, and the cars horning a wedding on its way to the town hall. We can hear every mutter of the audience, their amusement and perplexion.  I love performing in the open.  Hit the road again.




4 March. We only see a corner of Lourdes, the town of the Virgin Mary.  It's the corner between the snow-capped mountains, our motel and the Salle des Fetes. The theatre is a mini House of World Cultures, all concrete-oyster and dark glass.  There is a small constellation of citrus-tinted globes suspended above the stage, and four hundred people sitting on chairs in the dark.  We are the last item in the festival, just before the hip hop battle. Then again the road, the clouds for hours.  We return to Avignon past midnight. Jianhao and Lise gulp down a coffee and take the road for Lyon.




Five weeks will pass very quickly, said Ole.