Sofia - Bulgaria 28.9.2008

The ongoing travel.

In September 2008 I traveled for first time to Sofia. Ivo the main teacher of contact improvisation in Bulgaria and Petya Stoykova have arranged to notify dancers who would be interested in the project to do two dance sessions with me. Petya Bojinova offered her studio and another Petya with 15 enthusiastic dancers showed up.

As I said repeatedly this wasn’t going to be an audition. I wanted to meet the dancers, dance with them, show them what interests me and the work will bring close or send away the participants.

First day began with a contact improvisation class, ending with a jam, so everyone would be loosen up and enjoy dancing with each other. Next day we worked with one of the processes that I am going to use during the project. Through a brainstorming of words from the story of Rigas Velestinlis, we accumulated them loosely connected in different formations; the people that choose them gathered in groups having the task to create a structural improvisation. Meanwhile I encouraged them to use text-voice and steel whatever they wanted from a dance performance we all watched the previous night.

The traveling to meet dancers will continue

photos by Natassa Paschalis from the sessions.















Athens 11 & 12.10





first response from Bulgaria

some people answered to my invitation..
this was from Elena..

What do you remember eating in the morning when you were home. What do you drink now?
My mother’s coffee with milk, early in the mornings in her house. Or was it milk with coffee?
Before that: “popara” that my granny used to make: soft white bread in very small pieces,with mashed white (“feta”) cheese (we only call this cheese “cheese”, the rest is called “kashkaval”), with lots of butter, and hot milk poured on it. This was the standard breakfast before school. To this in the radio, EVERY day at exactly the same time, there was the epic song about Zar Ivan Shishman who lost against the Turks. It sounded more like a school bell, but I’m sure it left its trace in my unconscious mind.
Now I like drinking black tea, my mother gets sent by a friend from Yemen.


What do you remeber from your father?
His big ears, his belly of a pregnant woman. Once I told him this and he laughed with me a lot about it. At that time I had no idea it was a typical occurance with cancer patients.
I remember falling asleep together, with him, my brother and me in bed, while my mother was working night shifts.
He was big, always bigger than me. And quite kind. I think I got stuck with a syndrom for looking for him in my men. That’s why I always chose men who were not there – because he left me so early, I guess.
I remember recently I dreamt that him and me are lying in bed together. Not making love, just lying in the same bed, naked. It felt like we were brother and sister- I think this was the first time I felt that now we are equal. Because I was always a little girl when he died, and never got to meet him as a grown up.
Actually I also think that it was somehow good that he left me to grow up without his authority. I guess he would have been too conservative for my liking in the times when I enjoyed indulging in all sorts of freedoms. Only later I realised I was missing him


How did your lovers fuck?
The first one was as caring as could be. He was a literature teacher and explained everything to his students in sexual terms. He also believed that sex can cure any illnes, which didn’t help with my chicken pox. But he would come to visit me and read me stories.
The many after are not worth mentioning.
The last one was great. I called him St.Peter. We used to get very stoned, he would invent great stories to tell me, and then we’d fuck a lot. I think he was secretly in love with me for years, but I’d already left. He was doing up wooden floors in rich people’s houses. Sometimes he would call me in Berlin from their phones.
For a while we were still lovers when I’d go back, even though we were never in a relationship, but at some point I felt I was moving much faster in my life, and didn’t feel connected any more, so I didn’t call him any more.
This was about 6 or 7 years ago, since then I’ve never made love in Bulgarian. In fact it was extremely strange to dance CI in Sofia for the first time. People talking in Bulgarian and smelling different than people in the jams here.
This year I had a man here who smelled of Bulgaria after love, even though he’d never been there. (this is a part of my solo) This made me crazy for him. (well, he was good in bed anyway). It is such a strong memory this musty smell of Bulgarian men – I could only compare its effect on me to good hemp or jasmin oil. I guess I’m always looking for it…


How do you feel for Turks subconsiously?
Frustration and fear, extremely vulnerable as a woman.
And I wonder how come. I’ve met very good Turks in my conscious existence.
Jalaladin Rumi, whom I deeply admire, lived in Anatolia, and so do his followers.
I love the call for prayer from the mosques.
So I’m quite interested in confronting this subconscious disposition - I’d like to dance with Turks.


Do you still have the history book of 11 years old?
I don’t remember so much the history books, but I remember a poem very well:
- Даваш ли, даваш, Балканджи Йово,
хубава Яна на турска вяра?
- Море, войводо, глава си давам,
Яна не давам на турска вяра! -
Отсякоха му и двете ръце,
та пак го питат и го разпитват:
- Даваш ли, даваш, Балканджи Йово,
хубава Яна на турска вяра?
- Море, войводо, глава си давам,
Яна не давам на турска вяра! -
Отсякоха му и двете нозе,
та пак го питат, разпитват:
- Даваш ли, даваш, Балканджи Йово,
хубава Яна на турска вяра?
- Море, войводо, глава си давам,
Яна не давам на турска вяра! -
Избодоха му и двете очи,
и го не питат, нито разпитват,
току си взеха хубава Яна,
та я качиха на бърза коня
да я откарат долу в полето,
долу полето, татарско село.
Яна Йовану тихом говори:
- Остани сбогом, брате Йоване!
- Хайде със здраве, хубава Яно!
Очи си нямам аз да те видя,
ръце си нямам да те прегърна,
нозе си нямам да те изпратя!

It’s about taking away Yana from her brother into a Turkish village.

- Would you give, would you give, Yovo from the Balkan,
beautiful Yana to the Turkish faith?
- Chieftain, I’d rather give my head,
but I won’t give Yana to the Turkish faith.

They cut off both his arms, and again they ask him:
- Would you give, would you give, Yovo from the Balkan,
beautiful Yana to the Turkish faith?
- Chieftain, I’d rather give my head,
but I won’t give Yana to the Turkish faith.

They cut off both his legs, and again they ask him:
- Would you give, would you give, Yovo from the Balkan,
beautiful Yana to the Turkish faith?
- Chieftain, I’d rather give my head,
but I won’t give Yana to the Turkish faith.

They took out both his eyes,
And they don’t ask him any more,
But they got the beautiful Yana,
Put her on a fast horse,
To take her down to the valley,
Down to the valley, to the Tatar village.

Quietly Yana says to Yovan:
- Farewell my brother Yovan!
- You stay well, beautiful Yana!
I have no eyes to see you,
I have no arms to embrace you,
I have no legs to accompany you.



what do you carry with you?
There is one little village in the Rila mountain where my father built a house as he was dieing from cancer even faster in the years after Chernobil. He bought the plot shortly after I was born, but as he was not allowed to own it because he already had a property, and, of course, one couldn’t own two, he bought it on the name of his mother-in-law. Anyhow I spent countless days, holidays and vacations, summers, winters, springs and autumns. A girl from the capital city could never be one of the locals, but there was not many capital girls that I knew who had a place of adventure like this.
Recently I have come to realise that knowing this place as long as I have known anything in this life, and being able to go back to it again and again, even if it has grown smaller in the years I’ve been busy growing bigger, and even with the changing times, it is giving me a great sense of stability and peace. I know the earth, the stones, the grass, the trees, the flowers, the smell of the forest, the curves of the hill, the shape of the river stones, the chill of the water, the slippery feel of the bottom of the pond I used to swim in, the space between here and the mountain peaks, the harshness of the winter up there, the depth of the snow, its crispness and glow in the dark, the warmth of the fire in the house when I take off my wet boots at the end of the day, the magic of the stars in the calm of the night, the harsh freshness of the night air.
In an extremely cold winter a bear came down to the medow infront of the house, or so my father said.
In the night we were having a piss down in the grass from the terrace, taking the sobering challenge of the chill, and jumping back under the warm duvet.
There are two big arm chairs on each side of the fire place of that house. In the years since my sexual awakeing I got into the habit of taking a picture in my mind of the men that have sat on these arm chairs in evenings of the nights to come.
Of course, it was always the men who wanted to take care of the fire, and I’d always let them have their fun. Until many years later I realised that I actually never learned to light the fire skillfully because it was always the men who wanted to do it.
The place where we would go skiing from there has a Turkish name – Cham koria – Pine tree forest. The highest peak in that mountain has a Turkish name – Musallah – Allah’s mountain.

What oppresses you?
Ignorance, and as results of it: the “I know it all” attitude, disrespect, lack of moral values, lazyness and pessimism, unwillingness to cooperate for a common good, stubournness, lack of interest…