Dear soul, dear reader

 

Spring is almost gone and we are now heading to summer and I hope for most of you a well-deserved pause! Maybe we  will leave the wool headband at home when we go out for a walk and yes, we will definitively be more outside, enjoying the beautiful nature.

This newsletter is all about reconnecting to nature and ourselves!

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You have probably seen that the Reconciliation festival, happening the first week-end after school start on 25th-27th august, will offer several yoga and body movement classes led by Vanessa Livingston. I have known Vanessa from many years but what really got me into regular yoga practice is her outdoor classes that she initiated during covid time. I joined once in a class in late autumn, well dressed in wool and felt fully re-energised. Feeling your blood circulating better while a cool breeze blows on your face was really something new as well as  listening to the sound of the waves and the seagulls during the final relaxation period. This is why I had to invite Vanessa to join us in the festival which has its sources in the sea and in flow: the  choreography of the man and the sea by Julien Boclé. We can’t dance like a professional artist but when moving in nature with our most focused attention and intention, we can reunite with Nature and our inner humble artist.

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So the good news of this newsletter is that you don’t have to wait for August to experience that. Outdoor classes with Vanessa have already started, once to twice a week. You can join her Facebook private group Nature’s Movement with Vanessa. The classes are announced on the group page and are running from 3 participants minimum. The body movement classes varies from yoga to yogalates and High-Intensity Interval Training (Vanessa called that "Inferno" 😊). A little dip in the North Sea is also possible at the end of the class!

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There is another reason why I asked Vanessa to join in the festival. She organized 3 years ago a dance birthday party for my daughter. We were lucky and the girls could be outside. My daughter had invited about 15 friends and for 2 hours, they danced, jumped…and produced a show that all parents enjoyed at pick-up time. During the festival, our dancer artist in residence, Julien Boclé, will have a workshop for teenagers on Saturday 26th august.  He is now creating a unique choreography for our kids and together with Vanessa, they will train our young people and prepare them to dance on stage at Skur 2 during the closing event on the day after. The workshop will be in English and Norwegian and I just know from my own experience  that it will work! You can trust the instructors and our kids that this will be a memorable experience. The dancers will have of course free tickets to the whole Finale (including the piano recital and the Scandinavian premiere of the man and the sea with Julien Boclé and Frédéric Vaysse-Knitter on piano). You just have to be there to cheer them up!

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Who is Julien Boclé? Julien is 24, born in Brittany, self-taught dancer, raised by hip-hop culture. He has already an impressive number of collaborations with some big names in the world of dance and arts in general (one you probably know is Franco Dragone who was at the head of Cirque du Soleil). During the festival, you will be able to meet him in a relaxed setting, take a free class of body movement on the beach at the opening event and of course watch the premiere out of France of the man and the sea. Discovering this artist was a deep source of joy and that’s why I designed the program around his ballet and made up that festival so YOU can enjoy it too.

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I must now apologize to you if you do not live in Stavanger and feel kind of excluded of this letter. But thanks to technology, I can offer some kind of reconciliation. You can watch an excerpt studio version of the man and the sea on the progam page of this website (27th august). This is how I discovered it, on TV .

 

I hope you are ready to embrace summer with a regain of energy and possibly time. I won’t have time now for the Norwegian translation this month. That sounds a bit sad for soneone claiming for a time regained vision of life, but it feels also good to admit one’s own weakness and take some time to rest. I give you  some reading ideas to apologize…about music, body and movement.

• The beauty of the gesture, by Catherine David: music and tai-chi-chuan. I love this book written by an amateur pianist and a fantastic writer. I discovered this author in my search of music-focused literature and all her books resonate deeply with my own passion.

• The neural symphony, by Emmanuel Bigand and Barbara Tillmann : these 2 scientists demonstrate why music is a biological necessity. I just started to read this fascinating book and it will deserve an entire letter for itself. Now I just want to give you this quote: “the power of music on the infant brain lies in the connection that this stimulus creates with the human environment to which it is attached. It's not the sound itself that is relevant, but the human behind that sound.”​

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