Dance Away!

So. I am here. Dancing. Right?
Right.
I would now like to explain what I am doing in these dance classes.
Four days of the week (which begins on Sunday in Israel. So today is my Friday. Even though it's Thursday. Confused yet? I am.) the DanceJerusalemers are shuttled over from Ulpan to another campus of Hebrew University, Givat Ram, where the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance is located.
Two days we spend with the lovely, powerful women of Vertigo, two sisters who run a Kibbutz for Eco-conscious Dance (I believe, but don't quote me on that). This was the first class we took here and it TERRIFIED me. We begin our classes doing release (let go of the tension in your hips, observe the way your feet move when you aren't controlling them) and manipulations of our bodies. This is wonderfully freeing and incredibly exhausting. It is the most natural and the most difficult thing to do, at the same time. After about an hour and a half of this and attempts to follow demonstrations which require muscles that I have lost and am only now regaining ("roll over your shoulder backwards, then roll forwards over the same shoulder. Switch!"), we begin learning/practicing choreography. This choreography is incredibly demanding. It constantly requires you to be pushing energy out and down into the ground constantly. It is strong and forceful, but also lovely and incredibly precise. I have only recently (read: today) been able to remember and do it all (now I just to have to do it with FEELING!). It is a ton of fun, but is truly tiring. The piece that we have learned I believe to be about 4 1/2 minutes of constant movement, with tons of level and direction changes. Today we began to learn a softer part of the dance that is about surrender. This dance is fierce and hardcore. I am impressed that, after two weeks, I have picked it up (after NEVER EVER having learned choreography like this in my entire life) and am so aware of the true pleasure in movement.
The other classes are lead by a  hilarious, slightly terrifying woman named Aya. She has been called the right hand woman of Ohad Naharin, who is an incredibly famous choreographer here in Israel. He invented a movement style called Gaga and has choreographed many pieces for Bat Sheva, a FABULOUS company in Israel. I simply love to watch Aya. We spend an hour and a half attempting to float, be covered in flesh, have traveling stuff moving through us, isolating parts of our bodies while moving our entire bodies, feel waves of motion go through our bodies while continuously allowing the motion to be organic. If you stop moving, you hear a "But don't stop moving! What, you have to stop moving to talk? Be alive. Not dead like this. Alive. Always alive. And the traveling stuff. Always you must have the traveling stuff." Accompanied often by a slight baring of the teeth. And then a "But don't be so serious about it!" Haha. No wonder I like this woman so much. It is the most soothing and also the most awake state to be in. It is as though you are allowing your body to actually lead you, instead of you always trying to lead it (thank goodness, I'm sure it says). The complete paradox of this motion is so freeing. I LOVE Gaga. We then begin to work on the choreography that Aya has taught us. She is a stickler for details. So much so that we have really only learned about a minute and a half of choreography. But it is so important, she tells us, how you feel it, how it moves through your body. Another dancer discovered a recording of the choreography online and it is amazing to watch it. It is as though the dancers are completely in the present. They do not anticipate their next movement, it just happens, with no connection to the one that came before it. Because we have been taught this movement more slowly, I was quicker to pick it up, although no one has been able to pick it up as perfectly as she hoped we would.
All in all, I feel that I have developed so much as a dancer in the past two weeks. I have so much work to keep doing, but I feel that my body is more alive and that my creative brain is as well. I know now the pleasure of executing specific choreography correctly and doing so in connection with a group of 18 other people. It is magical and powerful and freeing and very difficult. And I am having a blast.
On to the weekend!