On Friday 22nd, 2013 there was an open stage evening at Motion Studios which takes place twice a year, and dancers and their trainers can present what they are working on in an informal frame.

Yui and me got to show an excerpt from ‘Agon’ by George Balanchine. The Gailliarde duet with music from Igor Stravinsky. It’s fucking weird to count, but very beautiful to move to once we got used to it. After that I did the ‘Kitri’ variation from ‘Don Quixote’, which I have been working on, but also paused for a while. I unfortunately over rehearsed it a little, so that my ankle got injured. Nevertheless I decided to do it on pointe, but there also went my concentration ;) have a look.

Since a while I am thinking about how to use ballet technique for performance. After this evening we spoke more about how to make the process visible, rather than the perfect end product, or on which other levels ballet can tell more than ideal bodies and romantic images. How could it be more punk, conceptually but also performance wise?

It was a great learning process to wrap my mind around these two, and train the complex states of thinking, imagining, counting, breathing…, which I much notice in my daily training. Thanks again to Jo Siska who rehearsed with us, and to Frances d’Ath who filmed the evening.

To see the video please write an email to workshops@dasniyasommer.de. Then we send you the password.