i’ve officially been in lyon for a week. we’ve actually gotten to see a lot of the city, even though we’ve been working most of the time on our dance-theater piece. it’s been lovely. we’ve made family meals, explored the old city (vieux lyon), and tonight we got to see batsheva dance company in this :

this is apparently the oldest roman amphitheater in france. katie and i explored it on sunday and i snapped this photo. tonight we made a picnic hoping to be able to eat in the theater before the show, but we weren’t allowed to bring in knives and bottles so we ended up eating in a nearby park. anyway.

the show was amazing. i actually took a class with ohad naharin, the artistic director, at cedar lake last year. his ‘methodology’ is called ‘gaga.’ there were ‘gaga dancer’ classes and ‘gaga people’ classes. i took the one for people. it rocked. we were boiling spaghetti on the floor.

his company consists of the best dancers i’ve ever seen. i’ve seen a lot of dance. and i’ve seen some really amazing technicians, and some people with incredible style or execution, but never have i seen a combination of technique and execution like this. each company member is classically trained (it seems) but is also inundated with naharin’s teachings for years. witnessing this synthesis is a treat.

their facility and intention of movement are flawless, phenomenal. and there is also this layer of elasticity and abandon over their impeccable technique that makes it truly brilliant to behold. this company was recently at BAM, but i missed them. i guess i just had to wait see them in an ancient roman amphitheater instead. shucks.

the audience was extremely enthralled with the performance (the piece was called ‘decadance’ btw) and they stood and threw their seat cushions on to the stage at the end - missing mostly, and hitting innocent low level bystanders.

in a totally unrelated - except in a geographical way - here is a photo of the inside of notre dame du fourviere basilique - a big honkin’ church on a hill that was built in the early 1900s right next to the amphitheater :

you could buy these candles to light and place in a crazy candelabra for 1 to 3 euro. depending on how much you care about the person you’re praying for, you spend more or less! :

here’s me and katie being tourists overlooking lyon :

we had to walk up an insane amount of steps to get to this place so forgive if i look a little exhausted.

also, the night before kourtney and i went out on the (gay) town, and with the help of her franglais (that’s english and french) we got into some pretty euro-fun (read: lame) places. we made the best of it, though (read: got drunk). not too many fun stories about that. except when kourtney used this bathroom at ‘PINKS’ after some drunk french chick puked all over it, then had to explain to the rest of the people on line that it wasn’t her. genius.

we danced to the worst michael jackson remixes ever.