Madrid, the 29th April, 2010

On my way to Colombia...deserted airport blues...


I'm in the middle of a very, VERY long treap. After three sleepless nights and so much work I've been handling lately (non stop!), this was not the ideal way of traveling but, hey, I am still excited to go to Latin America and hoping it's hot there.
I could really enjoy a bit of that caribbean humidity and that startling sun I imagine they have all over Latin America. I hope I'm right. Sun, here I go!

Here's the drama:
Cairo-Madrid.
Seven hours of waiting in a deserted, plain airport in Madrid (where did everybody go???)
Madrid- Bogota.
Another long waiting transit. (Wishing Bogota's airport cheers me up a bit, otherwise I will fall on my derriere at any given corner...damn...I am so exhausted!).
Bogota-Medellin.
Uff! I hope to have arrived to my destination by then...

All shops and restaurants are closed. I see no shadow of a human being - except for the nice cleaning ladies who look like smiley zoombies while cleaning these empty floors at 3 o'clock in the morning).
No place to sleep, although I've already tried 10000 positions on these metal chairs. I am known for being quite a contortionist and able to sleep in the most inadequate places and situations but this Madrid airport gives me no break.

As I changed, yet again, one more part of the choreographies I will teach in the following festivals (yes, I did it in the airport bathroom as previously announced), some childhood memories crossed my mind, out of the blue.
One of the interesting things about choreographing is to watch how many memories my body has kept from my early childhood.
Here are some of the memories that arose in the middle of a shinning, empty, cold airport bathroom in Madrid, at 4 o'clock in the morning while I moved around on my over-exhausted legs:
1. Me and my close family at the beach. Wild beaches where there were only us, my mum's food and that sense of salted, tanned, warmed up skin I simply adore until today. That warm, wild feeling of freedom and safe love has never left me and it permeates all my momevements.

2. My early birthday parties with african friends (as we lived by the side of a big african comunity). The smell of african food, the sound of african music, the endless laughter and the dance...ah, the dance...my african friends were the first to teach me the sensual, natural pleasure of the DANCE. Without tabus or condemnation of the body and the pleasures it conveys. Amazing. I am lucky to have been influenced by this incredible people and still feel them in my body.

3. Me, my sister and my cousins listening to Scorpions - we were late 70s, early 80s babies so...sorry for the tacky affirmation: I DID listen to Scorpions and that may have scarred me for life!There, I said it!) - in the basement of my parent's restaurant.
In my memory, we are laughing so hard that we often pee in our pants/skirts. We are throwing potatoes to each other in what we called, not surprisingly, the potato battles.
That sense of fun and playfulness, the hiding and the laughter remains with me, till today, shaping all I do, including my dance.

4. My most vivid childhood memory and, for sure, the one who marked/shaped me the most:
Me and my first best friend (who happened to be a gipsy) taking a bath at her hut (a hut made of planks of wood and other improvised materials), on a plastic bathtub.
Her father is throwing water at us with a hose and each one of us is grabbing a doll and smiling, just smiling at each other. I don't remember to have had such an intense feeling of what FRIENDSHIP means after that.
I remember our dances at her hut, the simple, clean and loving way to move. The respect I, automaticaly, gained by all cultures and races.
I wish I could find out what happened to this gipsy family and I feel so grateful to have had such a colourful childhood.
Out frequent treaps to the south of Spain (where my father worked for a long time) have also had a tremendous effect on me. Now... the curious thing is to watch how all these memories were assimilated by my body and shape the way I think, live and do my ART until today.
The body never forgets, it seems. It's like a sponge that will carry around all the bright things and shadows of life. When I rediscover myself through the movements and sensations my body remembers, I also realize another quite interesting fact:
The beauty is not only in the happy memories my body never forgot.
It's also in the pain and hurtful experiences. I can see beauty then, even in my painful memories the body did not forget (for sure!). That's alchemic, miraculous.

And these are the thoughts that occur to me while doing what I most hate:
Waiting.

Hoping to get to my final destination and sleep a long, deep sleep night!
Dreaming, dreaming...