Apparently it hasn't snowed in Paris for a while. I imagine France is getting a bit of the chill that London is getting at the moment (I know about London because in the apartment I have high speed internet and cable tv with bbc news on it - sweet eh?).
This is my walk every morning to the Chateau Rouge Metro Station.
Today was my first day at Ecole Philippe Gaulier!
Caught the RER B out to Sceaux, Paris which is about 10km outside of the centre of Paris. Nice little area. Looks a bit like Manukau - but French and awesome.
Paid as much as I could for the course - I couldn't get it all out from ATMs, and it took me so long to even find one. Even after miming swiping a credit card and then having lots of money in my hand to a info desk guy I still couldn't find one. Eventually learnt they call them 'distribution de billets'.
The school is upstairs at a little building. It feels very bare and wooden inside - and on the walls are political posters of Chairman Mao etc with Philippe's face imposed on them.
We start with Movement for 1.5 hrs. Exercises looking for 'complicite' - connection, fun, in on the game together... as well as body alignment, forward and backward rolls, and assisted back flips! Awesome!
Then 3 hours with Philippe. He holds a lot of status but is a very funny and fun man. After some quick introductions (in which we had to make the sound of our country's police siren, say "nya nya nya" if we were under 25, and burst into tears if we had a broken heart - i.e. no partner) we were then sent away to quickly make a costume out of clothes that weren't our own. So we all kind of swapped and traded clothes to make new quirky outfits.
We then went into improvisations in pairs as our 'characters'. The scenario was to be two spies meeting. Gibberish was to be used. This sounds a lot simpler than it actually is. What Philippe seems to be looking for is complicite, a sense of play - of game, of joy, of pleasure. Some scenes were verging on okay but most were "fucking boring"and "terrible". He said the worst score he'd ever given to somebody was zero...but then gave one pair -15, he gave me and my partner -39, and another -75! Then as the day went on (3 hours worth) he just started killing people on stage by playing the sound of machine gun fire on his ipod.
When people are bad sometimes he'll ask somebody in the class: "Jane, do you want to kill Alex because he was so ugly?" in which he'll eventually get the reply "er...yes...I want to kill Alex because he was ugly". These moments are incredibly funny. There was a lot of laughter in the class.
The class is BIG with 35 people in total to get through everyday. Because of this Philippe has extended the length of the class for an extra hour.
Homework for tomorrow: go and find a costume for tomorrow's class. We're all going to meet at this great 2nd hand shop at Barbes Rochechouart in the morning.
Afterwards went to the local pub - le chiquito - for a beer. Je voudrais une beer s'il vous plais.
This is Mark from London, Anaas from Denmark and crazy Ingabourg from Norway.
Then out to dinner with Angela from Italy, Marieke from Holland and Ollie from NZ! I had beef bourguinon. Yum!
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