Drop the Bomb

Today i was joined in the studio by Alex Bomb. I thought it would be a good idea to see how he took to some of my movement ideas and a little weight sharing. The response was good and i don't think he minds how Tony Thrills gets down. This was towards the end of the day and slowly but surely our studio began to fill up with old and new acquaintances. First was Hilda a freestyle dancer & teacher and friend of Alex. She had initially been recommended to me by Bboy Zee (see previous posts) as someone who might be suitable for the project. However, the deal with dancers/teachers affiliated with Caster Studio is that they are unable to take on work for other companies. We tried to negotiate but it seems the politics of the whole affair was proving too much trouble. On top of this, Jiang Fan, the dancer we had met earlier in the week, had gotten back in touch to say her schedule would not allow her to be involved with the project. A shame but i suspected this might be the case. I was keen to do the work as a trio, which would be new ground for me, but will also aim to produce the goods as a duet if that is how it plays out. There are still a few more avenues to investigate however. Hilda was followed by Tomaz with the final instalment being Benjamin. I met Ben during my first trip to Shanghai during our late night street session where the music was provided by the custom boom box attached to his moped. A creative dude constantly on the hustle, Ben has some good stories about his time as asia's biggest goa trance DJ and Korean bboy battles in chinese karaoke bars. I thought now would have been a good kodak moment with this troupe in the studio and then i realised that my mind clearly wasn't on the job any more and since we had done a decent days work i decided to wrap it up. 

Once i returned back to my gaff i had some admin to do. With the time difference i am just finishing my day while folk back home are just beginning. The lack of a scanner or fax machine that would send documents outside of China slowed me down somewhat. I then got a call from Ben to meet for some grub. One large bowlful of beef & noodles and im back at the hotel, passed out on my bed. I get woken up by the phone in my room..."Ni Hao! would you like hotel room massage sir?"...hmmm...tempting, but no thanks. Back to sleep.

T-e-s-c-o

38 Degrees today...wowza! and today i think was the first day i could see the sky as it was neither obscured due to smog or heavy humidity. I finally got a decent night's kip last night...so much so i found it hard to pull myself out of bed. Things are getting back to normal then. As a result of some good rest i had a productive 2nd day in the studio and slowly but steadily the ideas are coming. I realised i'd gone 4hrs without even a toilet break (that's because i sweat it all out i'm sure). I did, however, have my flow interrupted by two hapless young ladies who decided they wanted to practice their Waacking/Whackin' etc... technique before doing class. I was a bit bemused but thought they might get the hint when i stopped what i was doing and gave them the sternest Tony Thrills look as i possibly could...which is pretty stern i'm telling you. My body language was falling on deaf ears and just as i was about to eject them in a friendly foreigner manner, the receptionist came and ushered them out. Between me and you they weren't very good anyway otherwise i might have let them stay. If you haven't got a clue what i'm talking about with regards to their chosen dance style then you could do much worse than check out the documentary Paris Is Burning, which looks at an area of 80s new york club culture where styles like voguing, waackin' & punkin' where born.

My current hood...

So after i wrapped it up at Caster i made it back to my gaff and felt a sudden urge to hit the hay. My dad says don't fight sleep so who am i to ignore the wisdom of such a learned man. Upon awakening i felt a second urge and that was to eat. Good to know that life in the 21st century hasn't dulled our primal instincts. Whilst in hunter gatherer mode i came across a friendly face (see below). You gotta give it to them, Tesco is certainly leading the charge in the stakes of global supermarket domination. I decided to investigate. If you thought your local tesco metro got jammed in the post work food frenzy then try navigating yourself safely round downtown Shanghai's version. You have to be swift on your feet to avoid colliding with a trolley below the belt...and even swifter to pick up a bargain in the reduced section. There was some kind of argument over boiled eggs and live eels and fish up for grabs. The one fish floating upside-down didn't look too happy but i though it was good to see Tesco embracing the local culture regardless. All in all quite an exciting outing for a thursday evening.

Nitty gritty

Today i finally started to dust off some cobwebs, lubricate the joints and work off some those Willie Johns Stornoway beef burgers and blackpudding that i stocked up on, courtesy of the folks, prior to departing the UK. It's a pretty safe bet that my endocrine system will get a good rinsing out also as working up a sweat in this current heat, even in an air-conditioned studio, is no problem at all. So day 1 at Caster Dance studios involved getting the movement ideas i have in my head out into reality. I hope to do a chunk before i start working with the dancers. I do have a vague theme but i'm mostly keen to have the piece movement lead...no faffing about, let's just get down and dance. We'll see how that plan works out.

The Caster studio is one of 3 main studios (the other's being Dragon Studio & Dance Space) teaching hip hop, funkstyles & breakin' in Shanghai. Hip hop dance in china (well...in Shanghai & Beijing at least) leads quite a successfully commercial life. This is actually the norm and has been for a while now in other South East Asian countries such as South Korea and Japan. Dance teachers in these studios like Caster are on contract and are almost at pop star status. Yes, a very different scene than back in good old blighty. But then again, in this financial city with a population almost at the brink of 23 million, you're bound to find one or two punters who wanna learn how to get down. FYI - Tomaz & George are producing a documentary on the scene in Shanghai, which will be able to give you a much better portrait than i can...i'll keep you posted.

Caster Studios (casterdance.com & facebook) 

And news from back in the UK is that Room 2 Manoeuvre has made it onto the selection group for the Sadler's Wells Global Dance Contest 2011. Go check it out and show some love.
R2M globaldancecontest.com

Art attack!

My body clock is definitely playing at silly b-----s! Was awake the whole night but luckily didn't have to do anything until 2pm. Today's mission was to inspect a potential performance space where the results of these 3 weeks will be shown. Tomaz has a friend who runs an art space in the M50 district in Shanghai (m50.com.cn). It is a smaller version of the huge 798 District in Beijing both of which are dedicated to the creation, exhibiting, buying and selling of art in it's various guises. Needles to say it's reasonably cool and there's a cafe making decent coffee next door so double word count score there! The space will require a little bit of tarting up and possibly a floor laid down, but this is one piece of the puzzle now  accounted for.

The proposed performance space at M50 

I decided to have a bit of a wander around the district and see what Shanghai's artists are producing. The highlights had to be the art deco warehouse with some incredibly groovy furniture and this chair of...doom perhaps?

I was most taken with the Omen exhibition by the Lui Dao Art Collective (island6 website). There were some really interesting uses of LED technology combined with some classic styles. Cameras were like forbidden city...but i managed to grab a shot of this....tres chic!

First foray

Well i guess this is kinda day 1. Very late start most likely due to jet lag creeping in but also knowing that my first meet with partner in crime Tomaz Chow is at 2pm. I met Tomaz during my first trip to Shanghai as part of  the British Council/Creative Scotland Dance Links China programme in May 2010. He ran an art space in an area of Shanghai and was most interested in collaborating on a project when i first proposed it to him. Spaces come and go quite fast in the rapidly developing cities of China so his art space has now become an office in another area of town. Nevertheless, through a previous contact made in the form of BBoy George Zhi Zhao (or "zee" for short), we have managed to score a great rehearsal space at Caster Dance Studios. If you want to see video and whassup with the Shanghai scene and further afield in China then check out Zee's blog here Freshestkidschina.com. Following some studio reconnaissance and a quick hit of Costa Coffee (unfortunately it was all that was going around nearby) we headed into town to meet with a potential dancer for the project by the name of Jiang Fan, a dancer & choreographer with the Shanghai Opera and Dance Drama company. It is hoped her schedule will fit with ours.

The day was wrapped up in good style in an outing to socialise with Shanghai's multi-national mix of hip-hop dancers. France, Russia, Vietnam, Korea and Scotland was in the house. Of course there was serious side for my attendance at this soiree and that was to meet up with a dancer i met during my last visit, Alex Bomb (boom!). We had quite a memorable early hour street cypher during my last visit and i always thought he might be suitable for this project. As fate would have it, it turns out he just quit his job and therefore suddenly has some time in his diary. Tertiary employments loss is my gain. There is still a lot to be decided upon and organise but at least the ball is rolling.

晚安

Me & the Bomb!

High rise shenanigans...or shanghaigans

Shanghaied....

And so it begins! After a technical fault that caused my flight to be delayed by 3 hours, Room 2 Manoeuvre is finally in the house...the Jade house in fact. Today's inflight entertainment has so much choice that i find it hard to get some shut eye on long haul flights. I'm sure some unavoidable flight anxiety has something to do with that also. You may be able to choose a decent selection of art-house to action movies on board but unfortunately the same cannot be said for the quality of snacks on offer. I'm a big lad...and i need to eat so i don't appreciate a timid array of sweet and savoury cheesy puff pretzel packet type grub on the go. What's happened? I remember flying to Chile once and gorging myself on croissants, cheese and and a tasty meat selection. If you want to ease my anxiety then slip me a few croissants and i'll be putty in your hands. The glory days are definitely behind us in this respect.

Anyway...NI HAO people!! It is a teasingly tropical 35 degrees in Shanghai. When coming from Edinburgh, this is quite a shock. Accommodation is decent and theres a mosquito net on the window which i only hope does it's job...nothing worse than the moment you're about to drift of to slumberland and you hear the high pitched whir of a feverishly blood thirsty insect whizz past your ears. The Air-Con is cranked up to the max. But, not to worry, after contributing nicely to my carbon foot print with a 10hr flight i'll try and keep air-con use to a (reasonable) minimum. In an effort to beat the jet lag i'll aim to stay up a few more hours and kill some time by seeing what lurks around in this neighbourhood. Bottled water and stodgy food are the priorities. 

I had no idea that china's digital firewall extends to blogspot also. But where there's a will there's a way so hopefully you should be receiving/reading these updates. I don't think Room 2 Manoeuvre has many followers in China....yet :)

xie xie!!!

EC does it...

I thought i would do away with the rather rudimentary "news" section and get back up to speed with the blogging scenario. Updating this website is very much a process of trial and error. Although i am learning reasonably fast i still haven't worked out why the site looks completely different on a pc than it does on my mac? Well apart from internet tweaking here's what has been going down in the world of R2M.

Following a stressful, but successful showing of Watch iT! at East London Dance alongside Sebastien & Honji (check them out at sebastienramirez.com) and london's Birdgang, R2M embarked on a month long residency at the studios of denmark's Cantabile 2. The result was the beginnings of a new solo/duet project entitled SQUISH. More details to follow. Once the Danish Krones had run out it was time to head to the much cheaper climate of the artists anonymous city of Berlin. A week was spent in the company of Venezuelan maestro David Zambrano at the Schwelle7 Studios. Many thanks to Tian, Cora, Sina, Ana, The Greek and the rest of the multi-national crew who are all now very adept at quick changes between countless dance styles. 

R2M remains in Europe until mid-may for training, investigating, making connections and seeing as much work as possible including the Tanz Offensive festival in Leipzig...i'm sooooo europe!!