PARIS

Sorry it has taken me so long to upload onto this blog but have had a few technical difficulties with my IPad, but I realised I can use my friends laptop to upload my blog entries. So I will have to back track a bit. I have been to Paris and Amsterdam and today arrived in Berlin but have been so busy that I haven't had time to write about it till now. So I arrived in Paris on Christmas morning after a relatively pleasant flight. My first two days in Paris were "free days", meaning I didn't have any classes or shows to watch so I used this time to explore Paris and get over the jet lag. I was in Paris back in 2007 when The Australian Ballet toured here so I had had a good idea where everything was and that made it really easy to walk around and see a lot. The first night I stayed near the Eiffel Tower ( with amazing view of the Eiffel Tower) so I walked from there all the way along the river to the louvre and then to the Pompidou Centre. The Pompidou centre had an exhibition called "Danser sa vie" (Dance your life) exhibiting dance and visual arts in the 20th and 21st centuries. It focussed mainly on modern and contemporary dance and how pioneers such as Isadora Duncan, Nijinksy and Pina Baush contributed to dance and the art of the body in movement and the development of the visual arts which have maintained a close and fruitful relationship with dance. My favorite part of the exhibition was a video showing firstly a solo by William Forsythe and then a workshop on the different techniques that Forsythe uses in improvisation and to create movement. They were such simple techniques but from that, he created such interesting movement. After finishing here I walked back to the hotel via Hotel de Ville which had an outdoor ice skating rink. I would of liked to have tried out a bit of ice skating but thought it wouldnt be such a good idea in case I rolled an ankle and then wasn't able to take class. I was only 4 30 pm by this point but already dark so I walked home along the left bank, getting slightly lost trying to find my hotel but eventually found it. I had walked for about 5 hours that day so I crashed and had a very early night. The next day was a rest day for me. I changed hotels to one that was closer to the theatre then spent the rest of the day shopping. Well I did more window shopping, especially on rue honore but I did buy a pair of heels, mainly because I needed something to wear to the ballet at palais garnier the next night.