Briefly, Brussels

Brussels in a nutshell:

1.  Excellent Food & Vino.  Excellent.

There's just such a great array of restaurants and international cuisine.  I'm actually eating three meals a day, drinking way too much vino, and even without a sweet tooth, ordering, desert.

2.  Insane art, fabulous dance school (P.A.R.T.S).

Comics are considered an art form here.  There is even a museum devoted to this genre.  Give it up for Tin Tin and the Smurfs!

3.  The local humour (with all due respect), hints at a rebellious streak.

Behold, the tiny statue of a boy, pissing behind me.  Manneken-pis has been drawing visitors since the 15th century and he even has a wardrobe of clothes for different occasions!

4.  The variety of chocolate and beer blows the mind.

(Galler Chocolate, Rue au Beurre 44)

5.  UNESCO-listed Grand Place/Grote Markt surely deserves, respectful re-imagining.

I wonder how one preserves the spirit of 17th century commerce without spiralling down the Tacky Tourist Trap?

Poor Pony!

Please can there be a more sensitive curation of stores/tenants both at the square and at the Galleries St Hubert?  The latter is supposedly, "the oldest mall" in the Western world...

6.  Brussels reminds me of Butoh, the Japanese dance of darkness, of which I'm a huge fan.

Translation-  Brussels' beauty is expressed in its age and decline.

Brussels is like an old woman who has been rudely neglected. As the center of the EU, with a dynamic diversity of people, I wonder if anything can be done to protect the city from urban decay and mere disrespect?  Is there really a need for instance, to scrawl anger on every empty surface, especially when the surface belongs to something from a different century?

7.  Found a Belgium Crumbly.

Odette En Ville, Rue du Chatelain, 25

New Day, New City

New day, new city.

 New tram system to kind of figure out.

The station we arrived at is Bruxelles Midi.  I learn that both Flemish and French are used here- so the station is also called, Brussels Zuid, and a street is both a straat, or a rue.

First impressions- the city feels older, its beauty is the sort you find in decay.  Pay a bit of attention and there are traces of the Habsburg Kings, echoing back.

 There is also a very large immigrant population, predominately from the Middle East.  An older Arab man helps me locate the Magritte Musee (right behind his ice-cream cart!) with a cheerful smile, and I can't help but wonder, what if any, social/political dissonance is felt, by the overwhelming presence of The Other?

Merci, Monsieur!  I wave in gratitude.

I learn about Rene Magritte.

I've seen some of his paintings before, but have never been able to identify them.  Here's what I like about surrealism- it forces you to re-consider reality as experienced or perceived.

There's a painting done in 1927, titled, La Fatigue de Vivre.  I stand before it for a long while. And so I learn a new French phrase which I think eloquently sums up so much of our living- La Fatigue de Vivre.

The summer I turned 31, I was invited to attend the International Choreographers' Residency Program at the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina.  That same summer, the National Arts Council (Singapore) sent me to Impultse Dans, in Vienna, Austria.  I lived for 6 weeks in my American dance home, and then flew to a grand old Habsburg city, where I danced and lived for 4 more weeks, and learnt to say, bitte, danke, ich spreche ein bissen Deutsch.  Coming from an American perspective, I really didn't enjoy the European dance experience as much.  Then I found everything either too regimented, or too experimental, for my liking.

Now I am 43, living in the UK, of all places.  My entire humanities education is but a tunnel away.  Everything I saw today at the museum made me think, if I were to start choreographing again, I may possibly never ever receive any funding, because I can now feel Europe permeating within,  changing/challenging my aesthetic values and thoughts.

Changing, changing... (Unbelievable.  This is so not an LA look!!!)

I tell Jon- I will probably end up making a dance with no movement!  Do something conceptual instead of kinaesthetic, like- a dance within a dance (but again with no movement!).  Forget movement- there may not even be any costuming, or bodies on stage!  Oh, the audience will have to wait forever to see anything unfold, and for sure, people will start to walk out!

 Another thing I learn from all that Magritte is- as an artist/human being, he tried and did, everything.  Surrealism, impressionism, gauche, film, graphic design- Magritte did all that and more.  And then I saw that at the end of his life, his work took on tonal qualities I heard in his early works.  I wonder then, perhaps in life, if we are lucky, if it really is about coming full circle.  But arriving richer, much richer, than when we first begun.

Magritte Musee, Place Royale, 1 Konningsplein

Amsterdam- Art & Design/Last Thoughts

Today is King's Day in Amsterdam.

 The tradition is- wear orange, eat, drink, make merry, claim some space on any sidewalk to sell anything you want to get rid of, herald the start of spring.

There's no tram transport within the city center today, and many things are shut.  But the grand dame of Dutch museums, the Rijks is opened, so off we went for a late lunch, and a stroll through time.

The Rijks houses some insane Rembrandt and Vanmeer.  

Behold, Rembrandt's Nachtwacht (Night Watch)...

The scale of the painting, the manner in which light is captured and expressed, and the motion of the figures, left me a tad dizzy.

But it was Vanmeer's intimate painting, 'Milkmaid', that moved me profoundly.

How I wish, I could make art like that- art that is so simple, yet packs a poetic punch!

Other things I saw that affected me- a library within the museum (!),

and a wonderful doll house that for some reason, called to mind, traditional Peranakan interiors!

The light this afternoon remained, gentle.  My model was willing.  So I attempted shooting our hotel again.

GORGEOUS!

WOW!

Piero Lissoni is not Dutch, and I am repeating myself...But methinks he is quite the demigod of design!

More provocative design can be found at the Stedelijk Museum, that is now presenting 25 years of Dutch designer, Marcel Wanders.

I've never been quite a fan, as I don't feel pulled by contemporary design in furniture and daily living.  But walking through the exhibition, I began to enjoy his wit and the scope of his genius.

Yesterday I took Jon on a canal cruise.  

As we sailed past rows of historical canal houses, tree-lined cobblestoned streets, and the local folks whizzing by on their bicycles, he turned to me and said- Ok, I can imagine you living here with Bruno.

My last thoughts?  

A compact city filled with great art, innovative design, good food,

helpful netizens, a prevailing sense of open mindedness towards the new, the strange, dog-friendly, a less glaring divide between the haves and have-nots, and a feeling of being at continual crossroads- that's Amsterdam for me.

Lunch Date

Restaurant De Kas is not dog-friendly, so I didn't visit last summer with Bruno.

Today, with blue skies and a soft sun, we thought it would make a great venue for a lunch date.

A greenhouse sitting in a low-key neighborhood park, off, off the beaten path, Restaurant De Kas was worth the slight hike it took to get there.

Hiking...

It's somewhere in this park, Baby!  We just have to find it!

There it is!

Sometimes you meet a person whose face the camera loves.  Similarly, I find, on occasion, chancing upon a city, or a space, that is impossible to take a bad picture of.

It's about locally-sourced produce, or more specifically, growing the foods served.  The menu changes constantly, depending on what can be harvested from the garden spaces.

 Thinking back, there really wasn't even a menu offered at lunch.  The waiter explained the dining concept, asked if we had allergies, and brought out a medley of dishes.

I enjoyed myself thoroughly.  The setting is peaceful, the food is delicious, and everything expressed is done in casual, sophisticated tones.  When the sun shone too directly at me, i simply took cover.

Throw in the presence of my husband, and the lunch date is but a winner.  My friend S is spot on when he commented that dating in your 40s, is way better than dating in your 20s. 

Next week, he goes back to Singapore.  But this afternoon, I cherish a shared moment, harbour the peace and joy he brings, for one of those dreaded darker days ahead.

Restaurant De Kas, Kamerlingh Onneslaan, 3