Day 49 (Contact Improv)

Oh, my goodness, I so needed that!  I have been seeking out contact improv for awhile now but hadn't fully realized how much my body was craving it until receiving it!  Getting myself to contact improv was my self-determined main task of the day.  And though it didn't come without it's challenges, I managed to accomplish my goal.

I really don't know how I manage to call myself a dance/movement therapist and go all these months without slowing down enough to listen to my body.  Even though I was directed to let go, slow down, and listen solely in Spanish where I probably only caught every 5th word at most, my body rejoiced.  We were standing in a circle then and all I craved was to drop to the amazing wood floor.  Then I realized that I hadn't been on the floor, truly grounded and feeling the earth beneath my body since maybe October when I was last at Contact Improv in Berkley.  I found myself scanning through all the bedrooms and hostels I've found myself in since then realizing that they have all been hard cement floors.  Sure I've been active in my body through all my hiking and walking, but have truly been unaware.

Next we were directed to form two circles, one inside the other, and to one by one, to truly see the people in the other circle.  No words, but just to be seen.  With the anxiety that accompanied this, I realized that it is not only about speaking Spanish that makes me nervous down here.  It is about being different, feeling like an outsider in a culture that is not my own, that when they looked me in the eye they saw somehow that I did not belong, that I was unlike them.

Interestingly, the day before, my teacher Vinicio had done a class on the non-verbal communication of their culture.  All this time learning Spanish and truly there is so much more to the words that even when we take that away completely there is still so much difference.... and also so much similarity.

And then the sub-culture of Contact Improv.  The fact that we are miles and miles away, people from all over the world, and though it may have some differences, we connect in yet another language that doesn't involve words at all, but only our bodies.  I thought too about how long it's taken me to even learn the language of Contact Improv, the fact that I'm still learning it but that it's easier to participate in this dialogue of two or more bodies even when you don't know the language.

Then as I sat on the outskirts taking it all in, realizing that in addition to dancing there were also conversations going on in Spanish around me.  But I realized that even if I had been back in San Francisco or even Chicago I wouldn't have been participating in the side conversations.  My MO is to be a wall flower on the outskirts, observing, quietly justing sitting back and watching.  April had found it hard to be here and not be able to communicate, to talk to people.  One of my traveling companions earlier had made a statement something to the effect of needing to be outgoing down here because there is no other choice.  For me there is, it is easy for me to be silent, to watch, to just look on at this culture from the sidelines without needing to be a part of it.  Maybe that's part of the reason I like it so much, having an excuse for not participating.

Despite my normalcy of distancing myself from others, the people at this jam were very welcoming.  It wasn't difficult to enter dances as I have so often found in the Bay Area Contact Jams.  Everyone danced with everyone.  A small group of them gathered for drinks afterward in a nearby bar and invited me along.  There they included me more, at times attempting to speak slow so I could follow the conversation.  All my worry about there being too much English spoken in Costa Rica; even though they all knew some English, more English than I knew Spanish, we continued to struggle through my limited knowledge of the language.

So amazing to be so easily encompassed into a local gathering, not other foreigners but actually people from the country.  To have this instant community through the world of Contact Improv.  I wondered if I would have found this same community if I'd sought it out in Germany.  Though I attended weekly dance classes there (regularly scheduled, both a modern and ballet class) I'd always only looked longingly in on their connections, never talking to any of the other students in the class.  But somehow Contact Improv is different.  Beautiful connection....

As for getting myself there....  My morning started off slow.  My last breakfast at my homestay in Tres Rios was a delicious tamale, a large cup of coffee, and more fresh fruit.  I then took a shower and took my time packing up.  I think I finally left the house with my giant backpack full of everything at about 11:30.  I knew where to catch the best but probably should have done a better job at asking the people at the school about where to get off.  In the end, I saw a park that I thought was near the hostel I'd booked and impulsively jumped off the bus.  No bueno!  After I'd walked aways and gotten my bearings, I'd realized that I was still quite far from my destination.  In the end, I found a taxi to take me the rest of the way.

Once there I was still a little early for check-in but they were done cleaning so allowed me to claim a bed anyway.  The owner offered very little help when I asked him about getting a bus to Panama City for the next day.  He said I would need to book it then but said that the only way to get there would be to take a $6 taxi to the bus station to get it.  I'm staying at your hostel (=cheap), why would I spend more on a taxi 2 days in a row then I spend on a bed in your hostel?  All these buses, and there is none that go in the general direction of the bus station?  It makes no sense.  Even the people at my expensive language school attempted to help me with using public transportation.  Why wouldn't the owner of a hostel not be able to help his customers with public transport?

In any case, I looked toward my guide book for assistance and attempted to find a bus headed in the direction of the bus station.  No luck.  I decided if I continued I would miss out on Goal #1 of the day of getting to Contact Improv so went back the other direction to get myself there.  However, I had found the location of the jam a few days prior on my computer and made the mistake of only knowing the general location since they don't even really use addresses here anyway.  I thought that with a name of Taller Nacional de Danza it would be in a well known and large building.

However, when I found myself in the general location where I thought it was, it seemed to be only residential.  I sat at the intersection where it should have been located for awhile trying to decide what to do.  Eventually, I decided to walk back to a different building with Nacional and Teatre in it's name. I asked a guard there about the location of the building I was trying to get to.  He'd never heard of it, but asked someone else who directed me to a building in the other direction past where my hostel was.

Since I was near my hostel anyway, I went back there to access the wifi and pull up the location on my phone.  Oh, how reliant we are on technology....  If I'd only had google maps and GPS during my bus trip too I would have avoided getting off at the wrong spot.  With my phone map in hand, I was easily able to find myself back at that same intersection that I'd been in earlier.  On the sign the name of the building that I was looking for was just smaller and secondary to another name it had.  I was probably a half hour late and had only missed a portion, probably just my time on the floor that I eventually got to after the directed portion of class.