PINA: tanzt, tanzt, sonst sind wir verloren...the movie

I have no knowledge of German culture and history. I have no knowledge of classical culture.  I have no knowledge of the ballet world.  I speak only very little German.

PINA the movie blew my mind away.  Probably it had something to do with the fact that it's a 3D movie, but it's a seriously cool movie. First time I've heard of her was when my in-laws talked about the movie, so I don't know that much about her, more info here and here. But her choreography was very powerful, to say the least.  

What I really want to look up is the story and background of each piece featured in the movie.  I am wondering whether what I 'felt' and 'saw' was really what she wanted to convey.  But then again, probably the effect of art itself on people is as important as the intention behind it :)  My experiencing the pieces can have something to do, or nothing to do at all, with the intention and motivation, but it doesn't mean it's less meaningful or 'correct'.

I would say that there were not even 40 people in the theater last night, and the English speaking girl sitting next to me (who had her phone ringing within the first minute of the movie...) almost fell asleep at one point, but I think most people enjoyed it (though most people came 30 minutes too early, including us... because we all thought the movie would start at 8, when it's actually 8.30....).

Thank you, Mom in law, for taking me to the movie :)

Darmstadt, 15 April 2011.

Our first class in Sana'a...

Last Thursday was out first class in Sana'a.  That was interesting, LOL.

I ended up with muscle sore, I think partly because I had spent the whole afternoon trying out exercises for the warm-up section, hahaha....  I must have repeated the work-out part like 5 times, before settling on the routine and songs I wanted to use for the actual workshop.

The turn up was rather surprisingly many.  We know we had 18 people on the list, and I think around 20 people actually turned up.  Wow... I've seen around the same number of people dancing in our front room, but to look at them looking at me all at the same time, geez.... it kind of only hit me then, how many people we were about to lead astray.  I haven't been teaching (anything) in a large group for almost a year now, so that was an interesting refresher, stage fright, voice projection and all that stuff.

As I was working up the time division, I started to realize that the original lesson plan was kind of ambitious.  I was relying on the fact that most people would have known the basic already.  But from the sign-up list, I knew that there would be also some real beginners.  And as I had expected, we barely made it to the 'inside turn for lead', when the time ran out.

We managed to squeeze in the combination of the follow-lead consecutive turns, but that was already pushing it.  That only means, there is more stuff to learn/review next time around.

Der Herr and I were just hoping that people had fun, and learned something in the process.  It at least seemed that they had fun ;p  And the absolute beginners did seem to learn somethings.