Vake – Tbilisi, Georgia – 10:15pm

Today, I tried a new class in Marjanishvili. It’s part of my Dodo Theatre subscription (I paid for 10 hours, which is split between 4 classes, and that was 150 gel). I attended my first movement theatre class this past Sunday in Vake, where we did a plastic style of dance, which was kind of anti-Christ looking in aesthetic and erratic. I really enjoyed the experience because it gave me the opportunity to go outside my mind, to rebel against my self-consciousness, to just go with the flow and feel as my body wanted to, rather than as my brain restrained myself against.

Today was more of an acting class, where we focused on vocalization. For about an hour, we did this exercise where we stuck a knuckle in our mouths to try and project our voices farther and focus more on the emotionality of the scene rather than the actual content of the words we were reading. It was interesting. I definitely enjoyed being able to speak freely after having to speak through a knuckle for the first hour. My favourite was when we were tasked with speaking passionately, emoting that for our partner (we did a bit of pairs work after). I pushed myself to try and access that emotion a bit more, digging deeper and trying to project not just my voice, but a more acute, sharper feeling. I got really good feedback for that! My peers in the group (everyone spoke Russian and I did my parts in English) said that it was like seeing a different person, because I hadn’t shown that side of myself before. One of the other guys, Dima, said that I sounded like I would just take what I wanted. I sounded commanding.

After that, we were given prompts to dance/act out by our partners. This was my favourite part of the class, because we were allowed to improvise our own solo pieces. After about ten minutes of just experimenting our parts, we danced/acted in front of the others. Even though it was just small casual performance in front of four other people, I could feel myself feeling nervous as it got closer to my turn. I went last, and I felt like my part went really well, especially because the music just happened to go perfectly with my theme. I was assigned by Katie the theme of representing a piece of grass that had to rise up and break through the soil around two rocks. I had a general idea of what I would do, like starting on the floor, crawling around, trying to break through barriers, kicking around, and then finally waking up as I broke through the surface. I tried to just flow with the music. It was pretty fun even if I don’t think I expressed everything I wanted to perfectly. But, I finished, and received really enthusiastic applause. I was stoked! The others said it felt very complete, like it came back full circle, and that my dancing had been different, like quite creative and incorporating different styles or distinct movements. Katie mentioned that it looked like I was doing a bit of popping and locking. Overall, it was a fun experience as I got to dig a bit deeper into my creative reserves and pull through in front of an audience.

Afterwards, I walked up the road towards Dinamo stadium to try and find a yoga mat and strap for assisting with pull-ups. I managed to get these items before the shops closed (the row of sports shops right outside the stadium closed at 7pm), but it wasn’t as budget as I had expected (it cost 35 lari for a not-very-good yoga mat, and 40 lari for a large strap/band). Then, I found out that Korean House, a restaurant I ordered from once on Wolt and really liked, and which I had been meaning to visit in person at some point, was shutting down permanently… That’s sad! The food was really good there.

I could have had a more productive day, like in terms of getting more writing work done in this morning. Instead I just had a sleep-in, and then finally bought a two-week pass for Tbilisi Yoga Loft/Villa, which was an intro offer. I spent way too long trying book classes for the next few days, but I figured this was the only way I would get myself to finally get around to buying a darn yoga mat.

At least I finally got around to doing some writing work and making progress on my Nanowrimo challenge in the evening. I’m ecstatic to announce today is my ninth day in a row working on the Nanowrimo challenge. Today, I wrote 1927 words, and I have managed to write more than 11, 000 words towards my current project so far, even though there have been so many days when I just wanted to not write. Slow and steady wins the race.

Cheers,

Alaska