check in, butoh audition

Last night we headed over to Sarah, Abbie, and Taylor's house to celebrate Tim's birthday. They have a quaint house a couple blocks from our place. We had homemade carrot cake, cookies and I ended up eating the leftover peppers and chicken from their dinner. Tim arrived with Kara(New York) and Alex(UGA: University of Georgia Athens). Alex is a sophomore, originally from Romania, and Kara is a senior from NY. We all migrated to the West Village Apartments which were converted from old tobacco warehouses and are extremely impressive. They are 4 person loft apartments and surprisingly only $590 a head for 7 weeks. We met up with Raja(spelling?) whose birthday it also was. His mum and dad are both tattoo artists.

Megan and I headed over to registration at 9.25. Its quite nice living half a block from campus. It was held in the Ark which looks like a large 2 story old house which was gutted out to make way for a marlee floor. Like I said earlier, I'm still waiting on Olaf for my scholarship and Megan is waiting for money from them as well. We were shuffled from the Ark to Wilson talk to the school's registrar about our financial situation. During the school year Wilson must be a dorm, or at least its layout seems similar to one. We talked to Cara Clark and we gave our sch peal on Olaf and its new fiscal year etc. While we were there we checked out the ADF school store. It had all the usual: nice shirts, knee pads, posters (designed by an artist commissioned by ADF), water bottles.

Hanging out in the attic.

got lost going to target ended up in new hope where ever that is.

orientation was long and warm

quick sandwich for dinner

butoh audition at 7.15
The whole audition was spoken in Japanese then translated into english. It was pretty intense quad/Achilles heal work out. It was the first audition of the festival and actually the first movement opportunity of the festival as well. Here's the description of the what the audition was held for..

"With a name meaning “great, battleship camel” in Japanese, the Tokyo-based Dairakudakan is a tour-de-force ensemble. First introduced to American audiences by the ADF in 1982, the company is known for its Tempu-Tenshiki style of ghostly white faces and eerily silent screams. Producing over 60 works for the company, director Akaji Maro will present the ADF commissioned world premiere of a new work entitled Secrets of Mankind. The premiere will feature collaborations with musician Robert Kaplan, ADF dancers and Dairakudakan performers.

After two hours of crouch/crawling they announced the numbers of the call backs. "around 30" as they said, were picked. I'm 1 of 10 guys. Fun times.

Heres a clip explaining some of what butoh is.


heres a good example of a butoh dance.




Today weather
H: 100
L: 72
Heat index: 105
Time to drink even more water

scholarship dispersment

Money can be really frustrating at times, especially when colleges dont follow through with the transfer of scholarships to bank accounts. Then take an impatient landlady who cant wait till friday to cash her $500.00 rent check. Erhm. I'm really not a fan of money. sigh.

registration starts in 45 mins.

Day -1

Megan and I have been in Durham for the past 2 days. We've encountered many a glorious thing.

Last night we planned on getting up at 8.30; however that didnt happen at all. Megan woke up at 1.00am to Kayla and Mac's friendly barking. Thankfully my room is isolated upstairs in the attic away from said commotion. We ended up waking up at 11.00 once again. Oops. We needed the sleep after walking 6 miles yesterday to Duke's west campus. When we meandered down to the main level we discovered that Joyce, our landlady, has house cleaners. This explained a lot, e.g. the dog hair that covered every object in the house. They two ladies were very friendly.

Joyce found out yesterday that she was accepted to the Peace Corp and will be heading to South Africa to the post-apartheid mindset of black community. She is really excited to have this opportunity to help the such a community.

Megan and I have set up camp in a local coffee shop on 9th st. se llama Franceca's. I've had 2 cups of mango.peach.lemon sorbetta. Yum. I checked out a book store down the way and grabbed some NC postcards.

For supper tonight maestra Mojita and I will be preparing lovely rosemary.lemon.chicken, fresh cobbed corn, steamed carrots and milk. Should be interesting after fighting the entire time on how to make mac and cheese.

Woo fun times.

Today's weather: H:95 L:70 very humido