Juliana May on The Balkan Dance Platform

The Balkan Dance Platform
(Athens, Greece October 4-11 2007)

Let me first start by saying that my trip to Greece came right in the middle of my own process and much of my experience was framed by this fact. The romanticism/cliché of being abroad can thrust your creative process into a high speed flood of inspiration. A part of me cringes when I use such an all encompassing word because it somehow feels like it reduces the experience of making work to something fairly base or easily stereotyped. The idea that we walk around waiting to be inspired… or alternately that our work is really about rigor and making choices that go beyond the notion of waiting for “it” to just happen to you. I think it is both and also something more subtle…like a low grade fever constantly needing you to acknowledge its presence.. I had been doing a lot of that kind of rigorous work before Athens. The sitting down, working on my dance kind of work and i was happy to be flooded with that other kind of fast inspiration that feels impossible to put down. I saw a lot.

The dance I saw in the airport, in line at customs, smoking cigarettes wherever I want dance, the dance that comes from my brain, my body dancing, the dance in cellars, bathrooms, ruins, volcanoes, ancient dances, strangers dancing, hotel dances, the dance on CNN, the dance in the ocean and the traffic, dance from Sasa Asentic (Serbia), hydra dances, dancing with Abby Harris, Sara Nash, Kyle Abraham and even Richard Dreyfuss. Most of these dances happen all the time in NY but my sense of routine makes it hard to take notice.

Attending the platform shifted my perceptions about the Balkan Region which were naively seen through the lens of other more Western European countries with different criteria and funding capabilities etc… I felt a part of a global community …which totally feels like an annoying buzz phrase..but when you go away, you can really feel it. It hit a reset button on me. I am so grateful for that!