This post is going to be completely improvised. I don’t have anything special to write about but i feel that it has been too long since i put some text in my blogg and i don’t want people to think that i have forgotten about this little place for my thoughts and impressions for everybody to see.

I had this thought today (or was it yesteday?) and it was about what does it mean for me to dedicate a period of time (a week, three weeks, three months…) for dancing. For me it is a previlige to be able to do that and it is allowing myself to dive into myself. This emmediately raises many questions in my head, like why do i feel that diving into myself has to be done through some physical practice? Does it really have to be that way? And where is the balance in doing that? How deep do i let myself dive and for how long? Do i have to give something back to the world after having given such an opportunity? And what should that be? Is it an appologie? An “Excuse me..”? Or can i just trust that it will happen organically, by itself? Or can it really be ok to take the opportunity and dive into myself for my very own exploration and never give anything back?

And then there are many other questions… I wonder for example if dance is a sustainable activity? It is a very physically demanding activity that doesn’t really produce anything concretely usefull (like food for instance). We dance until we are exhausted and then we have to eat, rest and recover. Is there something missing here?

Two weeks have now passed since the beginning of the Basis-Projekt at Bewegungs-art in Freiburg, Germany. I have spent most of this week being sick, and then slowly getting better. Now i feel fine, except for a stubborn caugh that refuses to give in.

I was not the only sick person, in fact in the last two days we haven’t even had a teacher, due to illness. Someone today during lunch break got confused and said they had been to the flu market. Freudean slip?

I wish i could spiral like my thoughts do. Last week i felt relief and a feeling of certainty that i don’t need to explore dance further, after this current exploration. This week i found myself having fun with the thought of continuing to immerse myself in dance as a creative work/lifestyle/practice. By now i have already changed position again, this time influenced by my reeding in The Source Book (CQ article collection 1975-1990). Too long to explain here, but putting Contact Improvisation in the context of different dance traditions in history makes you wonder which traditions you want to follow or learn from and which ones you want to drop completely.

Tomorrow there is a queer oriental theme party at E WERK here in Freiburg. I wonder if i can come as myself, since i actually come from Israel. Is Israel a part of the Orient?

What a relief ! I thought today (the 6th of February) was the last day we had intended to do the 6 pm practice. But no! I still have a whole more week to arrive, stream, zoom in/out and take a snapshot once a day at 6pm.

This small and simple practice has allready pulled me out of feelings of stress, desparation and pessimism and i have all the reasons in the world to keep doing it. I think i will extend my personal 6pm practice indeffinitely but right now i feel very happy to have one more week of practicing it together with my dear fellow nancies.

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My life is now all packed in neet square boxes or in black plastick bags, some of it sitting in the cold dark attic of an appartment building in Stockholm and some of it in the same building inside the appartment where i have been sleeping on a matress the past 5 days. I have had this thought these past few days about how it feels when you go through all of your things (for example when you move to a new place and have to decide what you want to take with you and what you want to throw). I feel that it’s like going through your own past, memories, emotions… you are actually inside yourself and at the same time very much outside yourself, realising how many things you have and how much dust has landed on them. Also the different states of emotions that you go through make it clear how much of yourself is in the things around you. You see an old letter you wrote to someone you were in love with, you see a photo that you haven’t seen in years of you and your sister, realising how you both aged, you are sad and the dust makes you sneese, makes it hard to breathe. After a while you also find some old treasures, a nice drawing you made a long time ago, a shirt you never wore and you start feeling refreshed by this digging, as if you are shaking your insides and waking up old energies that have been locked inside.

Maybe we gather things as a way to store away our own mortality. As long as you don’t really know what’s lying in the closet underneath all the suits or what’s inside these boxes you see everytime you open the storage room door, you know that between being and not being you have a wall of boxes with your things inside.