me and degas

So I went to the Musee D’Orsay this evening after class, just to prove that Degas and I are the same.

That was a joke because of the photo of Nadine from yesterday.

But when I got there I realised there is actually is something in it. The capturing of performers before they are actually performing. It made me love Degas, me, standing there quietly in front of a dance class of ballerinas.

Me and Degas. Same same, but different.

Stepped out and Paris had settled into a blue-grey dusk and I walked slowly looking up at the evening buildings, pale with neat shadows. Walked between the arms of the Louvre looking up at the details and smiling a bit patronisingly at the tourists and thinking about today.

I am so afraid to be ridiculous.

The exercise today was to put on a show as if we were all seven years old and calling our family to our bedroom to see it. It’s got the potential to be a gorgeously watchable thing. All the clowns playing absurdly, full of timidity and non-sequeteurs and the pleasure to be with the audience.

He said, ‘If you feel we don’t love you its good to not come back. If we love you its good to come back.’

I had the feeling that they didn’t love me. So I didn’t spend much time on the stage but the time I spent was looking out at the audience like shy a child who likes their family. It wasn’t bad, embarrassing; ‘you push to much’ but I also didn’t get to try. I sat down feeling a little muffled and stuck. Like I must be scared to do the next thing.

dinah, as marilyn, posing for me in the break

Part way through the day one girl stopped the show.

She stood out the front after the others sat down and asked him again and again, ‘What must I do?’

He said, ‘For sure not what you are doing now.’

‘But what must I do?’

He told her to put on my costume and asked someone to loosen her hair around her face. She still wasn't funny so he asked for a bottle of tap water and told me to tip it over her head. Which I did. Big pouring runnels of water over her black hair and down the gorilla fur. There was still no funny.

He asked her to walk towards him slowly, which she did until she was so close he could reach for her hand. He took it and kissed it saying, ‘You are so beautiful. You are so beautiful. Look now at your friends.’ She turned just slightly, looking at but only just. A red nose, a gorilla costume and a little girl in tears behind a curtain of black hair.

We all laughed. He kept kissing her hand “You, you, you are beautiful. You are so beautiful when you are ridiculous. Now look at your friends."

We laughed.

"We love you. But not your character, your character is not beautiful. We don’t see you when we see your character.”

And she looked at us and we laughed in that way a parent adoring a crying child will laugh. (I know it. I know it. I’ve been the adult and the child)

“You feel ridiculous and everybody love you.”

We loved her.

He talked about fear. How he is afraid, terrified for hours before a show, and that he talks to the fear:

“Thank you fear, you are my friend, you hate me to be fascist, you hate me to push to much, thank you fear to be around me. The fear help me to not be a bastard.”

victor, really not scarey. or a bastard

We did an exercise where a bunch of people are on stage and he plays the teacher, telling everyone not to say anymore vulgar, bad words, getting furious with the class and then ‘leaving’ the room. After 45 seconds we were to start to say bad words under our breath to each other and enjoy the pleasure of saying them.

It was so fun. I sat behind the Singaporean boy who taught me a very crude word, which I then bastardised mixing it into an English phrase. The Singaporean girls in the audience laughed so hard, and he turned around with such a flushed face and sparkling grin and high fived me. Then I whispered it gleefully to the rest of the group, explaining the translation

Watching other people do the exercise was almost as fun. The gleeful, naughty, suppressed pleasure is such a delight to see. It felt like a light way to finish the day.

One girl was talking (in a complainy kind of a way) about how much time it takes.

He said, "It takes time, but it is a beautiful time."

I'm so sad that this time is going to end.