Dancing wherever you go

I spent one week in Lisbon in October, and as it rained quite a bit, I decided to join some movement and yoga classes in the city. I highly recommend Movement Lisboa and Baraza Yoga. It’s quite fascinating to see how the movement scene is developing all over Europe and meeting people with a shared understanding of what movement is and how it can change our life feels very special somehow. I connected with two people during class and we went to the beach together and even had a little acroyoga play.

I love spending time just hanging out in a new city, walking the streets and allowing myself to get lost. While doing so, I discovered one of my favourite cafes, called Tease Cafe. I spent almost my whole day there, reading my book (Pick me Girls - Sophie Passmann), writing in my journal, eating delicious food, amazing cupcakes and drinking one of the best hot chocolates I’ve ever had.

One of my other favourite things to do is finding places to move in public and film myself doing so. So here is a little snippet of me dancing, before a security guard came along and told me off, as apparently it’s too dangerous to dance here. The world is crazy!

Performing at the Royal Opera House, London

‘What could be more beautiful than making a connection… this is what live performance should do after all!’

What an experience performing at the Royal Opera House in London with Page One Theatre. It always fills me with so much joy to see the childrens’ reactions and watch them play with their own balloon at the end of the show :-)



Rise and Fall by Page One Theatre

Creating anything from scratch is always a risky and vulnerable process. But it’s so worth it. It felt like a scary and exciting endeavour to create a piece for children without a narrative. We usually create our material based on some form of a story or a poem even though it’s always quite abstract, but with this piece we solely focused on the material and essence of a balloon in all different sizes. We learned that they create such strong images that in a way it is not a one woman show, but an ensemble piece. All elements equally important. Balloons, sounds, performer, space, light. All these pieces come together as one and create their own kind of composition and logic. So thankful to have learned so much from this process that developed over two and a half years. Here is a picture from the very first day of our research back in March 2016.

The piece is now touring London. For dates see here.

Balloon research 2.jpg

ArtfulBadgers / Company of Animals / Performance at MusicalZoo Festival, Brescia

I haven't worked with masks in a very long time. But I remember that I always loved it, because it had such a clear technique and allowed you to make the movements of the body bigger. Also I love masks, because I personally find it liberating to cover my face and take on a different identity through that. For all these reasons I loved performing with ArtfulBadgers at MusicalZoo Festival in Brescia. Thank you to Zoe Simone for the concept and choreography and Elia Conti for the creation of the costumes and masks. It was an amazing experience! 

'p a r t i c l e s' / Landesgalerie Linz

„p a r t i c l e s“ ist eine zeitgenössische Choreographie von Inge Gappmaier in den historischen Museumsräumen der Landesgalerie Linz. Der menschliche Körper wird dabei in seiner Materialität und Mehrdimensionalität in Bezug zur aktuellen Ausstellung „Bauhaus-Beziehungen Oberösterreich“ gesetzt. Konzept, Choreographie: Inge Gappmaier / Tänzerinnen: Inge Gappmaier, Lena Pirklhuber, Stefanie Sommer / Dramaturgische Beratung: Stefanie Sommer

In my own space by Inge Gappmaier

Looking forward to seeing this cross-generational duett by two very wonderful women (Inge Gappmaier & Maria Anna Farcher) I also feel proud that I helped with dramaturgical elements - dramaturgy seems to be my new thing lately... If you're around Oberwart (Burgenland), pencil it in: OHO (Offenes Haus Oberwart) 18/03 at 19.30

http://dance-identity.com/madeinaustria.html

Lights Out Trailer

 

A little glimpse into the magical journey of searching for the moon and reaching for the stars... Hope you enjoy it as much as we did :-) 

Circus performance at IMHERE Studio Vienna

My very first aerial circus performance will happen on the 18th June 2016. IMHERE Aerial Dance & Art Studio is celebrating it's first 6 months with a performance, called "Après La Danse". There'll be live music and catering - so save the day, let's party and dance!! 

 

 

Balloon project with Page One Theatre

The last few days I have been working with Page One Theatre on a new project for children about balloons at Chelsea Theatre in London. It's been wonderful to discover the different qualities from elegance to floating, rising, falling, rushing, bobbing all the way to tension and suspension. I am very excited to continue this exploration and to discover balloons of all different sizes and characters. 

 

If you'd like to see more of our work so far, take a look here. 

 

Five of my favourite quotes:

1 -  We all have possibilities in us that ordinary life won’t let us realise. We all have only one birth and one death. We are all different, but in the narrow stream-bed of everyday life we are rolled together like pebbles until we all look alike. Or until we shake ourselves free and begin to act out the other parts that life denies us” (Afterlife by Michael Frayn) 

2 - Then I found something else: shame. Shame can be understood as modesty, uncertainty, something which is natural to children. You can see it on their faces when something has touched the secrecy of their inner life. It is like a feather inside you which is fragile. Following Plato, I believe that this is about your soul. (Hidden Territories: The Theatre of Gardzienice by Wlodzimierz Staniewski)

3 - If you can scream so madly that your whole body screams in it, you will be relieved of much pain, much suffering that is accumulated. (OSHO) 

4 - Through the ritual action, attention and interest are led back to the inner, sacred precinct, which is the source and goal of the psyche and contains the unity of life and consciousness.' (C.G. Jung) 

5 -   Touch helps define body boundaries and body image. Unless you know your body - feel it, sense it, rather than deny it - you can't go beyond the still  picture you have of yourself. You're frozen in a snapshot rather than moving in a film. (Discovering the body's wisdom by Mirka Knaster) 

Focus on your breath...

Breathing is, of course, vitally important. However, it could be a major cause of physical pain in parts of your body.

'The connection between dysfunctional breathing and pain is straightforward in principle: if the diaphragm doesn't do its job well, muscles in the upper chest (pectoralis major) and throat (sternocleidomastoid and scalenes) try to take over' (Paul Ingraham).

This can of course cause tension and stress on your body and mind. How to train your diaphragm to work properly and more is explained in the full article here. 

www.painscience.com/articles/respiration-connection.php