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