Please join me...

so this blog used to be one of those "art school grad that needs to get a life" kinda blogs (scroll down...you'll see what I mean)...I'm pretty sure it is still that, but I wanted to add some overtones of shameless self-promotion.

COME TAKE YOGA WITH ME!!!!

not because I am trying to get rich...I gave up that dream long ago(I was 5yrs old), but literally cause I want real bodies and minds of people I know and love to join me in exploring what this "yoga" thing is that I will be real-deal certified in in May(whatever that means). I just want to try to keep it real and sincere! The last thing I'd want to do is turn into a crazed yogi who says funny Sanskrit words that all translate to "SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!!) If I ever post a picture of myself in a pretzel pose on facebook, somebody kill me.

Hawthorne Yoga in South Philly

Saturdays @ 11:30-12:45 on April 9th & 23rd, and May 7th and 21st

here is the site

Beginners/All Levels Class

Classes are $5-$15, sliding scale.

part of the proceeds go toward the Marie Ireola Yoga Teacher training program and part toward Hawthorne Yoga itself to fund renovations, new mats, etc.

Either way, these are part of my certification hours, so I would love feedback from your lovely face!!!

Elite Training NORTH in Fishtown (bet. Rocket Cat and Circle Thrift)

EVERY Sunday @ 3-4:30

here is the site

Gentle Vinyasa Yoga

Classes are $10 each. if possible bring your own mat (we have extras though)

This place is new, amazing, and we could go get coffee after class!

About my class:

Christina Gesualdi teaches a gentle Vinyasa yoga class that suits beginners and intermediate practitioners. We will practice softening the mind, releasing the muscles, and sorting out patterns of holding and tension. We will use the breath to guide our movement as we explore our range of motion, alignment, and balance. We will be curious and figure out how we can tailor yoga postures and sequences to fit our own bodies. Christina has experience teaching yoga and stretch classes at various fitness facilities in Philadelphia. She is a graduate of University of the Arts where she received a BFA in modern dance and studied exercise science and anatomy and physiology. Since then, she has continued studying body-mind techniques such as Tai Chi Chuan in Taiwan and contact improvisation. A resident of Fishtown and a prior resident/lover of South Philly, Christina is excited to begin teaching students from this wonderful community.

back in philly. new/old solo silly

I will be showing a rework of this solo bit I am working on.

There will also be other performances by , Anonymous Bodies/Kate Watson Wallace, Club Lifestyle, and other awesome people who are up on the scene.

Please get up. and come.

learning curves

My time in Taiwan has been passing like freakin high speed rail train powering down the track headed toward one of the towns with a name that I don't know how to pronounce. I can't believe it will be August in two days.

I want to talk about learning curves. What is a learning curve exactly?

I guess it charts an increase in competence,knowledge, and/or performance ability over time. It deals with a the ideas of noticing it, questioning it, trying it, experiencing it, understanding it, applying it, narrowing it, widening it, failing at it, trying it again, forgetting it, recalling it, sharing it, autonomously choosing and executing it. And then what? Then you gain a skill or tool that will always be at your disposal.

What if we all charted our lives out? ...infinite progressions of curves swooping upwards . we just keep making curves. reacting to stimuli and making changes. We embark on curves together as class mates, as voters, as employees, as girlfriends and boyfriends, as tourists. The curves are not sloping lines...not a step ladder-like pattern... not a rise-over-run that I could easily just step back down and retreat back to the origin. They are accelerating or decelerating curves that make it not so easy to undo the exponents and retrace your steps back to square 1. These curves sweep us up. We can not help but to be carried away. Our life is patterned. Things occur. We notice, and then upon reoccurrence, we learn. Our insides become patterned too.

This is a promotional ad for my time at the Taiwan Princeton Review Office and for my strange/awesome summer in a foreign country. It ended up never getting posted. So 4 months later, here it is.

Tai Chi in Linsen Park

Okay...that is not me in the picture, but I did take tai chi in Linsen Park which is so close to where I am staying. A man named Edward (either that is his English name or he has a Chinese name that sounds remarkably like Edward) taught the class. I approached him after one of his sessions last week and asked him if it'd be okay if I join in and he not only said yes but went out of his way to make me feel welcome and comfortable. So then it rained a whole bunch and I assumed that the classes would not be held in the rain, but it was sunny this past Friday, so I went to join in.

First let me say that people over the age of 30 or 40 in Taiwan, as a rule, are amazing in that many of them make it to the park early every morning or late each night to get in some form of exercise (walking, stretching, aerobics, tai chi, etc). Even 80 and 90 year old people can be found circling wrists and ankles and doing simple repetitive motions. I would not be caught dead in Rittenhouse Square in Philly doing kicks and jumping jacks and weird breathing, walking, flailing, hitting, massaging, and stretching motions, but here, anything goes. Its like a surrealist scape...at 7am in the park, it appears (to a westerner) as if the people have collectively gone a little bit off the deep end. Under the veranda a man digs his elbow into a woman's groin and pats her stomach. Another woman stands behind, holding the passive woman by her arm pits. They repeat jabbing and massaging rituals on each other as nonchalantly as I might pull out a stick of gum and stick it in my mouth. So I don't seem like I am staring, I turn my back to them and then across the lawn I can't miss a group of about 15 people with purple shirts and pink pants on. They are playing some kind of music. There are words on the recording too (maybe instructions?). I can't discern if they have a leader of the pack or not, but they are simultaneously swiping their limbs through space. From an (again westerner's) and dancer's point of view they move like the church choir in Sister Act, but they do larger full-body movements but with an added bit of awkward reservation. The movement is full, and busy, and quick like calisthenics but far far less self-indulgent than jazz-er-cise. I mean it seems like they are there for joy and healing and a release, but they don't feel the need to SHOW it. Its more like a microwave concept where it radiates from inside to out. The whole display makes me think about layers of tackiness and self indulgence and inhibitions and subtlety in public displays of movement that are maybe not meant to be "watched".

The group I practiced with was much less "showy" and they just kind of did their tai chi thing together without much fuss. I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb, but it was well worth hanging in there because what a smart technique it is.... We began with finding an internal breath that massages your inside organs but doesn't bring tension into anything else. The body stays grounded, simple, and aligned. Then keeping this root, this energy, from the inside, we found the momentum of our arms, letting the joints hang, glide, and swing. We used this trajectory to literally tap into every obvious muscle group in the body (ultimately hitting ourselves) and thus waking up the skin, connective tissue, and other body parts that lie beneath. This pattern of movement worked its way down...all the way to our calves. Then we did some more breathing and swinging. It seemed like the point was to find these simple energy pathways and joint-folding pathways while rotating and cycling the torso and stabilizing the lower limbs. We did a little bit of leg lifting but the emphasis was on raising things from the center and softening what is not needed. I feel like there is much more that I could say, but I should probably get my ass to many more of the sessions before I pretend to call it my practice.

but from a dance perspective, to sum up, some things that this experience makes me interested in =

• how much of what happens internally must I be able to show or exhibit?
• how do practice, consistency, discipline, participation, just showing up, regularity, etc. affect a form?
• How does the heat/temperature/humidity/rain affect the form?
• How does our mind/body connection manifest itself?
• When do we think about it? Is important to show we are thinking about it?
• Are there limits to where, when, with who, or how I can think about it?
• Since it is mind/body connection, then often Think means Embody?
• What do people in Philadelphia embody? What do people in Taiwan embody?
• What does it mean to embody?
• Out of body experience???
• How much of embodying centers on attention? how much centers on experience? how much is related to flow?
• Forms instilled with ideas. Ideas instilled with forms.

Okay thats enough questions for one day.

later.

Are you there Taipei? Its me, Christina.

It is wild here. Seriously from bathroom etiquette to language barriers...from crazy foods...to hectic traffic patterns...from subway rules to mosquitos, I have pretty much submerged myself in culture shock 101. Its insane how many things we judge when we just don't understand them. As much as I did want to LOVE Taipei when I got here...my original thoughts were "oh shit". It is dreary and polluted. The drivers and scooter people are a collective beast that will prey on you and turn you into a puddle of blood and guts if you are not careful (or even if you are reasonably careful). If you ask for coffee with milk they make you a latte and if you say no milk, they give it to you black and the only thing they will give you is fake creamer (even if you point to the milk carton right behind them). This is bad cause I hate black coffee and I hate artificial creamer, and I don't mind lattes but when your bowels are locked up like fort knox from travel nerves and what not and you consider all the rice and dumplings and doughy baked goods you may be consuming in the near future, you want to avoid boiled milk at all costs. Luckily I don't mind the heat but a mild/safe/glossy alternative to the hot streets and sidewalks are the air conditioned department stores. Things there are fairly pricey and fairly generic and cute, if you have the money to buy them that is. They all look quite similar and are impressive but also seem really lame and anti-adventure/ anti-risk. They seem to scream "consume! Consume!" in an even less bad ass and , to me, more irking, way than shopping malls do in the U.S.! I was told to expect heat waves like I've never experienced heat waves before, but it was unseasonably cool upon arrival and all I could sense was the passive yet chilled nods from people as I passed them. Some were friendly, but when I tried to ask them a question in English, they would freeze up and panic and then apologetically run to find a bilingual employee to help me out. I felt bad that they felt bad. After all, it is their country, their language, their culture, and if anyone should feel bad it should be me. It really started to annoy me at how hard it was to communicate. It is cute at first, but it gets old really quickly.

So all this stuff sounds negative and awful and 1000 plus dollars spent for this trip...it sounds like it was all just a big old waste BUT its really quite the opposite. I have so many good exciting things to share and tell, and I promise I will find the time to get the most poignant of these things down in writing. One thing about traveling that makes it all worth it, is that it is really an exercise in remembering how fundamentally good human beings are. Whether the things they do, say, or believe seem dangerous, or ridiculous or dirty or amazing or mind-blowing or intelligent or risky...no matter how far their style of living-constellation is from your own, there is some fundamental essence there that each person has and it can be sensed and appreciated and even celebrated. That alone, makes the plane ticket well worth it. I don't know... it is like, we talk about having tolerance in the US. We talk about being accepting and having open minds, but I think that we should start discussing how closed our minds really are. Mine is. I don't think its a bad thing as long as we can talk about the "why". Why do we find patterns? What is lifestyle? Why do certain things make us cringe? Why are our life-patterns the way they are? Its like sometimes I just assume that everything is common ground, that all things, people, places, etc. are made equal, that the things that are my impetus to wake up every morning are not too damned far off from that of others. And if it is, I feel like that's a gap worth trying to conceptualize or rationalize or legitimize, but I am starting to learn that this is a step that takes a lot of energy and is useless in the long run. Curiosity for its own sake is crucial in keeping our world view fluid. Curiosity for the sake of trying to figure something out and legitimize it and find a common denominator is absolutely useless.

Okay...that is my philosophical rant for the trip. Its hard not to go all semi-anti-Nietzsche-esque when I look out the window in my room and see the tops of mediocre city buildings with foggy but breathtaking mountains in the background. But for far-less lofty and pretentious purposes, here is a running list of foods I have eaten so far here that I have never had before. Cheers to tangible and edible experiences (often on wooden skewers)!

LIKE A LOT: sticky rice/pig's blood cake on a stick with spicy sauce and peanut powder, fried turnip cakes, lamb dumpling, this weird tentacle thing dipped in ginger sauce, anything from the bakeries here, grilled pork wrapped scallions on a stick, wax apples with salt and some kind of sugar powder, lychee, Taiwanese mangoes, bubble tea (real deal), Taiwan beer, this really amazing cranberry yogurt at 7-11, and some good vegetables that I can't describe but I got a whole plate of em at this buffet for 65NT ($2 american). so yes...good damned food, so I can't complain.

This blog = Taiwan Blog #1

This used to be a dance blog/or a me blog, a self-indulgent virtual diarrhea...It will become that again...probably all too soon...BUT the big distinction is that for the next 3-ish months this will be a Taiwan blog. I am certainly much more interesting when separated from my readers by a 2o-some hour plane ride. I am certainly more interesting when teaching SAT class 9-5 every day. right? ehhhh. okay maybe not.

Hello gaping cultural divides...I will be eating stinky tofu and sweating my balls off and bathing in a sulfurous bubbling springs. This should be fun and if not fun, just plain different.

so...see ya in September Philly.

K.Bye!

Christina

new solo. a hair in my salad and other minor annoyances

I like this title for a dance work or a book or for something. I have nothing to use it for, but if anybody does, feel free to steal it. Presenting, "A Hair in my Salad. and other minor annoyances...". Maybe some day I'll want it back. Thats generous of me right????

Hmmm...lately I have been bugging out and nerding out on what it means to be generous. The idea of an artist having a 'benefit' just seems so crazy. Its so conflicted cause generosity has nothing to do with funding (or does it?) and other artists that get invited to the benefits are no good at being philanthropists. Artists are good at sharing resources, they doggedly exert massive amounts of energy for causes that help more than just themselves, they dive in head first, they genuinely care about works and "invest" in work of their peers. They spend money. yes, from way back, artists have spent money to buy wine for their social gatherings. Maybe to buy absinthe for their artist salons. I am just guessing, but I feel like this is part of modernism. They like galas and getting dressed up and boozed up and they like being bohemian and semi-fancy all at once. They like the juxtaposition. They like the feel of being semi-poor and semi-underfunded. It keeps them real, gives them art-cred. They also like to flaunt their anti-establishment mentalities at their peer's Benefit Events that take their structure/impetus/intent...etc. from those that well established organizations put on. Although a for-profit business probably spends more on one day of boxed lunches for their corporate lunch meetings than a nonprofit spends on a whole damn benefit event, the fact of the matter is, both are about spending money...both are lavish in the sense that: the employees could have packed their lunches or the non-profit could have asked Yards for a money donation that would go straight to their cause instead of getting beer donated. Ultimately, people and artists like food and beer, we like entertainment, we like to get a bang for our buck and if not a bang, at least something worth writing home about. We are spread too thin. We have expenses that need to get paid, things we feel like spending money on, things we forget we spend money on, things we can't even foresee having to spend money on...yet.

We are scared of money. I am. We know that by giving it too much worth, we are falling into a trap...the trap set up by "the man". But we can't keep our middle finger hard and erect forever. Sometimes we have to acknowledge the idea of currency and money and credit and worth. Our finger goes limp and then our hand goes limp and we reluctantly and wimpily offer our dead-fish hand shake to "the man".

and rant on. rant on...I am not sure yet what my point about benefits are. I am going out to buy a beer. or maybe go support an artist and, in a round-about way, buy a beer. either way...cheers to benefits. more to come I promise.