Au Revoir, Marseille

This is most likely my last post from France(all the rest will be catch up from home)! I have had a really wonderful time here and, though ready to go back, definitely going to miss this amazing country. Luckily, my last day here is their national holiday (le 14 juillet, Bastille Day!) so I will just join the France love fest.
I finally did some research in Marseille today! Good job me! I checked out a couple of places which were either closed for the summer or seemed to no longer exist. It looked like that was going to be the case with the Cercle Catala as well, but I decided to call even though it looked like their address was an apartment building...it was. This old man comes running down the stairs in his boxers after my call. He brings me up to the apartment to talk to him and his wife, and they are adorable! Both of them are authors of books and articles about Catalan culture and history. They turned on some music, showed me their traditional dance, and gave me a cassette tape of the music to listen to at home. Sweet! They proudly showed me their office, a shrine to Catalan culture, as well as the newsletter that the Cercle Catala sends out every month. Nicest and cutest old people ever! I also met with Xavier Blaise who is the head of a center that provides the children of Marseille with access to arts. He had a lot of insight into how second generation immigrants consider their cultural heritage.

And what did I do for fun my last day in Marseille? Take a gander:

Cathedrale Notre Dame de la Major:


Longchamps (a memorial to the canal that helped Marseille's water shortage):


The famous Marseille bouillabaisse. Yea, I tried it. Not gonna lie, it kind of freaked me out when they brought the full fish (eyes, head, tail, lobster brains, and all) out on a plate, but I did my best to get the meat out and ate it in the broth. A little too salty for my taste (and I didn't like how there was fish sediment floating in it). Ah well, it was an experience.

A nice goodbye sunset at the beach near my hostel:

Marry Me, Marseille

I'm giddy. I can't concentrate on my work. I'm sweating. I just want to look at you all the time. I think I'm in love.

But for reals, Marseille is a wonderful city. Yesterday Gabby and I went to the Chateau d'If (the island prison where Edmond Dantes is held in The Count of Monte Cristo),

the old port,

the basilica of Notre Dame de la Garde,

and walked around to many smaller sites. The feeling here is very relaxed and it's cool to see so many people from other Mediterranean countries. The food is also delicious. I had a seafood risotto for lunch and tasted MANY different French ice cream flavors today (nutella, lavender, raspberry macaron, nougat, lemon meringue pie...ok that one's not French, and of course my favorite salty butter caramel).

Don't worry, more photos are to come of this beautiful city :)

Preview of the Grand Catch Up

Hey everyone! Sorry I have not been able to blog in a while (the "free wifi" in the Rennes hostel turned out to be a company called "free wifi" with whom I do not have an account). Wifi mix up aside, I absolutely LOVED Rennes and really want to figure out a way to get back to Bretagne. I saw a lot of gorgeous 15th and 17th century buildings, some very cool performances at their 5-day festival, met some interesting people involved in keeping Breton dance/culture alive, and participated in a Fest-Noz which looks like this:


Before Rennes I had spent a very nice day in Toulouse. Heddy Maalem was very welcoming, intelligent, and inspiring. After he and I talked for a good 2.5 hours, I spent the rest of the (kind of exhausting) day seeing all of the sites of this beautiful town. Some hilights of my tour de Toulouse:
-breaking all of the ticket machines at my metro stop with my American card
-watching little kids do a relay-for-life
-hearing Heddy bemoan the fact that jumping up in down and clapping to the beat (as displayed by the relay runners who were warming up) has become our culture's community dance (it literally pained him)
-getting to see the Musee des Augusins for free! (they had some great sculpture)
-going to the violet store (apparently violets are a pretty big thing in Toulouse) and buying a box of sugared violet encrusted chocolates disguised as macarons (oh you sneaky, sneaky French)

Like I said, this is just a preview so pictures and more details on my time in Rennes are still to come. Right now I am in Marseille which is wonderful, even if it is absurdly hot. My hostel is in walking distance from the beach, so immediately after arriving I went to stand in the Mediterranean. For dinner, my roommate (Gabby from Oakland, CA) and I walked down there again, watched the beautiful sunset, and tried Moroccan food (lamb and couscous. um, yummmmmmmmm). Today Gabby and I are going into the old port to do some site-seeing and then probably to the beach again. It's so hard to try to do research here :P

The Episode in which I am My Grandfather's Grandchild

Soooo...I was supposed to arrive in Toulouse at 4:45 pm...I arrived at 10:45 pm. There was a HUGE thunderstorm this morning and it knocked over an electrical tower type thing on to the tracks of the train station I was supposed to leave from. Boo. It took forever to figure things out. After standing in 3 lines, talking to many Brits, taking the metro the wrong way, taking the metro the right way to another train station, waiting in another line, and bursting into tears while talking to a ticket agent, I was finally riding the rails like my Grandpappy Brousseau during the Depression. I felt pretty ragamuffin-y because I had to sit with a bunch of other displaced travelers on the floor in between trains. It was a long day, but quite an adventure!

Now I am in Toulouse, which is proving to be a friendly city (at least as far as the hostel goes), but it is late and I am tired so I am going to get a little shut eye before I talk to Heddy Maalem tomorrow/see the Pink City!

CND Live!

Hey everyone! I'm currently in the library of the National Center of Dance (CND) looking at their awesome archives, periodicals, etc. and very much enjoying their fans and shade! Tonight is my last night in Paris and, despite the heat, I am very sad to leave this city. As a final goodbye, I went to the gardens at the Palais Royale, ate a gyro in the Latin Quarter, went to Notre Dame (there was no line so I decided to pop inside), had some Berthillion ice cream on the Ile St. Louis, and read the section "Paris Atomized" from Les Miserables next to the Seine. Don't make me leave!!!!!!!

Tomorrow I am taking a train to Toulouse where I will meet with Algerian/French choreographer Heddy Maalem! I will be there through the 4th (I'll have to try to find a celebratory hot dog) then it's off to my next stop- Rennes!

So Much Nudity

Last weekend I had two days filled with dance watching. On Saturday, I went to the first few rounds of a dance competition called Danse Elargie that was held at the Hotel de Ville. It was...interesting. Between Saturday and Sunday (when I came back to watch the finalists) I saw about 30 people butt naked. I also saw several pieces that I would characterize as "performance" considering there was little-to-no dancing in them (e.g., a piece where a man played the drums with chalk drumsticks which exploded into many pieces each time he hit his drums and a piece where they forced a live sheep to watch a video of a sheep being skinned). I was disappointed when I saw who the judges (most of whom were not dancers) chose as finalists. It was clear that they went for concept over technique. A piece with untrained dancers painted in gold and wearing cow horns ("alligators" came in later in the piece) was chosen over a really beautiful piece about the goth movement. It seemed like contemporary dance in France is drawing much more from their theater traditions (i.e., absurd) than from their classical dance heritage.

I also saw another ballet at the Palais Garnier. La Petite Danseuse de Degas told the (fictionalized) story of Marie van Goethem, a student at the Opera's ballet school and the model for Degas's sculpture The Little Dancer aged 14. The costumes and lighting were absolutely beautiful! They really made it look like a Degas painting. The story, however, wasn't very interesting, and the choreography was lovely but not extraordinary.

On Sunday evening I went back to the Mission Bretonne to observe a Fest-Diez (day festival). Everyone was enjoying themselves very much either on the dance floor or at the bar. I began talking to one woman about the connection between dance and culture, and pretty soon there was a small crowd around me. Everyone there was so friendly and so excited to talk about these subjects! I can't wait to go to Bretagne and experience these festivals on an even bigger scale.

Dance Class!

The Dance Center of Le Marais offered a Baroque dance class (court dancing of the 17th century) and I wanted to check it out. I watched as they rehearsed for their show and decided which historically-accurate costumes they would be wearing. Baroque dance is the predecessor to ballet and, from what I've learned, is not widely practiced outside of France (though there is also an Italian version and a troupe in New York). Even though no one explicitly said this, I think that Baroque dance has stayed central to France because it is part of their dance heritage.


I took 3 dances at the Centre Momboye- Guinean dance, Congolese dance, and "Oriental" dance (belly-dancing). The Congolese was by far my favorite. The teacher, Wanuke, was young and exuberant with rainbow-colored braids. Her class was a mixture of Congolese dance, gumboots, salsa, and a few other styles thrown in there. Lamine's Guinean dance was also a lot of fun, though it felt much more like an aerobics class (the average age was probably 40). Amir's belly-dancing class was a little more difficult to follow (even though she was the only teacher who spoke English to me). I thought it was very interesting that in each class she had an "improvisation section"...in which she would improvise and we would all follow along. Over all, I had a great time trying new dance styles at the Centre Momboye!

A mural near the Centre Momboye:

I also observed an Indian dance class (held oddly enough in a Sunday school). I was very surprised when I showed up and the teacher wasn't Indian at all! She was a French woman who was teaching Bharata Natyam, a dance that was born in Hindu temples. The dancers will be performing on Thursday and I'm planning on going to their show. From all of the students I talked to, the students in this class seemed the most interested in the cultural aspects. They were using dance as a window into the culture, whereas most other students I've spoken to seem to be taking class so that they can learn only the dance.