We left our young and weary traveller groggily lugging her oversized backpack into Mark's truck. Already sitting with bags were Nina and C. C was the first to speak, "You look cute with sleep lines!" and so my falling asleep in the ferry became a running joke. I joined them in the back of the pick-up truck and we rode up the Island's one road to Mark's property. The ride up the mountain was already beautiful enough and when we opened the wooden gates to the Studio and walked in, I found Bob Dylan's Mississippi haunt me again:
"All my powers of expression, and thoughts so sublime
Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme."
How was it possible that this dance studio was here in the middle of nowhere on obscure little Lasqueti? It just doesn't make sense. What I can tell you is that Mark started building everything in 2008, and and had it completed enough by 2009 to start having workshops. The studio did not scrap nature's interfering trees or stones, but was built around them. An arbutus tree shoots up in the middle of a stone stairway out of the studio and out back into more wilderness!
Now Mark doesn't just own the studio. He owns 20 acres of land out here!! So until the next batch of dancers arrived and it was time for dinner, I figured I had better start exploring and find a prime location for my tent. While stumbling my way around the paths, I kept seeing Oyster shells. They mark the trail because they glow in the moonlight, just in case, you, an unprepared wanderer had forgotten your headlamp (extremely useful. Often I felt like I was relying on faeries or fireflies, my friends, these glowing shells to bring me back to the comfort of my tent.). Apart from the studio, there were a couple of other smalls buildings: a cabin for Mark to sleep in, two chicken coops, and the sauna (there was also a kitchen, attached to the studio).
On every structure were solar panels and the walls were built with glass bottles and cob, to let the light in. I saw some chickens on my walk and said hello, walked past laundry lines and the outhouses, and decided to put my tent here overlooking this pond.
On my walk back I saw a couple people sitting at the dinner table. Mark pipes in, "There's lots of fruit! And we're is making guacamole. I don't want you to go hungry! So really, please feel free to eat whatever, whenever you want." I glance to my left and see Hannah scraping out avocado into a large mixing bowl. On the table was a magical mixture of strawberry jam, chocolate and almond butter which was pretty much amazing to dip your organic bananas or pears in. Of course, they compost out here! And anything that is actual waste is used as an insulator for the chicken coop Mark is in the process of building.
The rest of the troops began to trickle in and introductions were made!Before us was a dinner that similar to the studio, I wasn't sure how to compute. Vegetarian lasagne, fresh salmon, and just-picked raspberries for dessert. After dinner, people were expecting to jam (when I say jam, I mean dance sessions). There wasn't a formal lesson today but eventually, like trickling rain, bodies touched. And I felt a profound sense of returning home after a long trip away. I hadn't jammed since the end of Eurydice at the University and I had sorely missed these contact highs. Right about now you're probably wondering dear reader what Contact Improvisation is. It's a form of dance and movement with the principal is maintaining contact (or anti-contact, i.e. negative space) with the floor or your partner and exploring different ways contact can be made whether it is pushing, sliding, pivoting, rolling, pushing or pulling. Here is a video to better articulate and explain!
The jam evolved and dispersed and reached many people until I found that Nina and I were the last in the studio and that it was nearing midnight. It was decidedly sauna time. As we staggered through the dark, drunk with dreamy amazement at this wonderland and passed my tent, I asked, "What do you wear in a sauna?"
"What do you wear?"
"Yeah."
"Oh. Nothing. Nobody really cares. I mean you can wear clothes if you want."
From where I stood, I took a look of contention at the compartment of my bag where I knew a bathing suit was--paused--and we kept walking. To get to the sauna, we crossed a wooden plank over a stream of water and hopped tree trunk stumps until we found our ways to its warm doors. We undressed and entered. It was dark. Apart from a meagre window that occasionally lets moonlight through, it is just you and the people, the dark and the sweat. Throughout this trip, it became necessary to sauna after every class, having philosophical discussions in the dark, jump in the pond right outside its doors, return back to the sauna for a second sweat, perhaps have a shower and continue to hang out with the great people you met.
This night, feeling delirious from the heat, from countless ferries and buses and from the sheer beauty of this place, I was walked back to my tent, read maybe a page of Lolita, and fell asleep hearing no cars, conversations, trains or lawnmowers. Just silence.
Gorgeous.
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