As a second day of class, I experienced  even more content than yesterday while participating in Ondrej’s workshop as I had the chance to partner up with a great ‘leader’ during the partners’ dance exercise. What made the experience most fulfilling was the joy and excitement that the other person  brought into the exercise as I was following and enjoying every second of dancing with them. What is more, trusting the other person and giving in to their lead as well as their decision how fast/slow and in what direction we should move turned out to be an utmost pleasure for me. The sense of unpredictability energized me as never before. It definitely made me feel alive, celebrating the physical contact and connection we had throughout the last minutes of the workshop. I believe that it is this type of interaction between people, strangers for the most part, which brings together and unifies each person in the room.

As we moved on to Trajal Harrell’s workshop today, what made an impression on me was when he brought up the terms ‘butch queen’, ‘femme queen’ and his own observations on the movie ‘Paris Is Burning’ during a discussion we had on the latter. The insights,questions and comments of my colleagues also added more to the overall experience in class today as they stimulated  my curiosity to delve into the topic at hand and ask myself what more is there to be known about it. The above mentioned terms were perceived by me as  food for thought on what is the significance of gender,self-expression,identity and perceiving one’s identity in a society where gender becomes more  and more ‘fluid’ and hard to define as a term. Nevertheless, the class discussion we had with Debra at the end helped me to figure out more what gender implies. Another favourite part of the workshop for me today was when each of us had to pair up and learn each others dance accumulations while simultaneously performing our own. This experience of breaking someone’s dance piece down into separate movements starting from performing it as a whole and then substracting each movement one by one after was a great dance lesson per say. It is the challenge of performing your own piece and then presenting someone else’s that teaches you how to explore your own body, its limitations,capabilities and creativity as well those of your partner who gets to do the same but in their own way.

Over the seminar part of our class today, I found myself intrigued and even confused about what exactly should we assume when speaking of gender and its meaning,moreover, how it plays out in dance and dramaturgy as well. The confusion for me stems from the reason that, I personally, have never been ‘into’ discussing, questioning and even challenging so to speak the significance of gender whether in society or in the field of various art forms. The topic always felt distant to me until today’s discussion on it, due to the fact that it provoked my thoughts, challenged my preconceived ideas and prejudices on what is the importance of gender and why is even a question that people debate over it so much especially nowadays. As a result, I felt I gained more understanding why it is so crucial for me as a person and an artist to enter class and any life situation with an open mind, tolerance and willingness to adapt, support and understand different worldviews and concepts which might seem distant and unrelatable to my own personal experience. Overall, coming from a place of curiosity and readiness to learn, explore and experience is the ultimate goal I am going after as a consequence of the impact this class has on me so far.