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September 18, 2008
Back from the South
It’s been a while since I have visited these unreal pages of substance we’ve come to know as electronic communication. My absence is justified to a certain extent I guess, reason being that I have just been to South Africa for two months, a place in my mind where primitive life can still be productive. A place where recycled tea bags have evolved into contemporary art, a place where electricity suddenly disappears for two hours, a place where children still create their own toys and sadly where people still vote for a president who still has rape and corruption charges against him. It was none the less a colourful journey of interior frustrations, exterior celebrations mixed-in with reflections of how perspectives can vary across the waters. That is what holidays are for I guess, to reflect and recharge.
Today I find myself on a train to London to take part in the South Bank’s offering of ‘dancEUnion’, a three day event starting tomorrow, 19 September 08. I will be performing alongside choreographer/dancer Ana Lujan Sanchez in her work ‘CervaNtes’, originally created as a solo in 2005.
DancEUnion is a bringing together of 23 member states of the European Union over a period of three days, all communicating through the medium of dance. Now that can’t be too bad can it. There will be No guns, No camouflage. No innocent bystanders or young recruits put in harm’s way. If only the international community could always communicate this way. If only they taught ballet in the army, things would be different. The event also marks the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008 and is one of a series through which the organisers EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture) will aim to strengthen cooperation between the national cultural institutes of EU countries. We need more of this cultural exchange and less television, the latter being my excuse for the inclusion of dance and warfare in the same paragraph. I know it is ridiculous, but so is advertising and the notion of wittingly sending human beings to the slaughterhouse. War and its atrocities are everywhere and unapologetically at that.
Other than that, next week is back to work and keeping that Phoenix flame alive is the immediate priority now.
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