those dancing days

I was in dance schools all throughout my teen years. Sometimes, in the summer, I would also join workshops or go to dance festivals.

To be honest, I think I've tried almost every style you can think of: ballet, contemporanean, ballroom, poledancing, lindyhop, mtv dance (don'ts ask), tapdance, scottish jigs, russian circle dances, tarantella siciliana, portuguese tradicional dances...  I even tried classical indian dance, once!

The classes were very different, too: from the one I learned mazurka, in a big tent in Andanças, with a man playing the violin for us and everybody hugging in the end (because it's so intimate and beautiful), to a ballet class in a theater with a stiff lady, that screamed "STRAIGHTEN UP YOUR LADYPARTS" in a weird accent.

I'm not trying to brag and say I can dance all this things. Because I truly can't. I was really bad at some of them cofcof hip-hop cofcof and I never practised enough to be actually good at any. But it was fun to try it all. and I like fun.

(Will somebody pleeeeeze offer me one of this for christmas? Yes. I mean you, João.)

So, anyway, signing up for dance classes eventually leads to dancing on a stage a few number of times. At least once a year. No big deal, just small stuff that only my parents saw, but still..
Considering all the times I danced for a public, I can think of three that were probably the weirdest, or simply most unconfortable performances of my life.*

#1 - the time I danced merenge in Rivoli

I really don't know what made me join latin dances when I was 14. It was probably because my friends were joining too (all the cool kids were doing it) and I didn't know better.
I didn't stay for long, but just enough to take part in the school show, in Rivoli.

It was one of the most professional places I danced in.
I cleary remember the mirrors with the little lamps all around it. The dressing rooms. The list with the alignment stuck to the doors.
Being in a backstage was one of the things I most enjoyed about dancing. Busy corridors full of stressed people! Glitter! Weird Superstitious! 

Backstages are awesome!

But let's face it: Merengue isn't reaaally my kind of dance. It's all sexy and latin.

and I felt awkward.

At some point in the coreography, I had to do this move where I walked/bounced-in-a-sexy-way, over my dance partner, who was lying down on his back.

14-year-old me was very prudish and shy. Having to dance sexyly with this older boy (he was 17!!) was bad enough, the possibility of him seeing my panties made me feel really weird. I think my face always went bright red in that part of the coreography.

Some years later, when I started taking contemporanean classes, I got much more confortable about dancing close to other people. All the touching, grinding, falling and rolling over random strangers does that to a person. So, thankfully I'm not as much of a prude now. But then again, I didn't have many boys looking under my skirt since then, either.

#2 - the cinderela ball
I had a very very minor part on my dance school's production of Cinderella.
Most of the time I was on stage I just had to stand still in the same position. Which wouldn't be that hard if they hadn't made me wear the most itchy, girly, abajour-looking dress I ever put on. 
And I could'nt move. I couln't scratch.
It was SO unconfortable.
I was waaaay past the age of liking those frilly-princess-ballerina outfits. I wanted to wear wavy long skirts like the ones older girls had. And black tights. I wanted to be elegant! 
Instead I looked like a dancing wedding cake.

#3- the drunk teen dance
One time, me and the girls in dance class prepared a coreography for one of the school recitals. It was a contemporanean piece about a group of friends meeting for a few drinks and getting too drunk to go home. There was obviously a lot of leaning, falling and rolling around, can you picture it?

So, we decided that some of us should play guys, to have a more heterogeneous group of friends. I was obviously one of the chosen to do so, since I'm fairly flat-chested and if you hide my hair and dress me in baggy clothes I look like an extremely tall 13 year's old boy.

I'm convincing myself androgyny is not a bad thing and it'll eventually be usefull if I commit a crime and want to run away unnoticed.

Not only was I in my male disguise, there was a part, in the beginning of the coreography, where I tried to flirt with one of the girls, and slaped her ass when she turned away.

No kidding! I was the sexist douchebag! That was my part!! I was the disgusting man in the group! 
I was THAT guy!

Sometimes I still think: why the hell did we decide to do a cross-dressing-underage-drinking coreography in a recital for our parents.
honestly. why?

whyyyy??

Anyway, one of the mums thought I looked hilarious dressed as a boy and she filmed the whole thing (my parents didn't... go figure.)
We met a few weeks later and she told me she had been re-watching it from time to time just to have another laugh.
I'm glad it improved her spirits.
 

*(to be honest, there were a few worst than this three, but I'm still blocking them from my mind.)

Helgoland

When I think about Germany the last thing that might come to my mind is probably an island. Surprisingly, Jakob told me about this archipelago, where he's planning to go tomorrow in order to shoot a video for his next exhibition (Jakob lives in Kiel, close to the northern coast of the country ). According to Wikipedia, the locals speak an Heligolandic dialect of the North Frisian language called Halunder — how cool sounds that? The best thing I found so far about the island is the motto explaining its flag, so down to earth as naïf as "Green is the land, red is 'Kant' (edge), white is the sand. Those are the colours of Helgoland!", simply the colors you can find within its layers if you imagine it as a cake. Everything looks pretty in Helgoland: the houses, the boats, the grass, the police vans — oh wait. I always felt particulary interested on these kinds of micro-systems/climates, on how these geographical conditions develop people's minds, relationships or values. I instantly made a link between this image and the documentary 'Its the Earth, not the Moon' by the portuguese director Gonçalo Rocha, which starts with the aim of making a movie about everything on Corvo — the smallest island from the Azores Archipelago — its landscape, its cows, its people, their stories, their houses, their jobs, their thoughts, their circumstance of living on such a small place. I think that part of the seduction or fascination one can find within these narratives is the use of a small metaphor in order to comprehend a bigger reality, just like Lars Von Trier also uses the small village of Dogville or the plantation of Manderlay to illustrate and reflect on, among other ones, the concept of democracy. Imagining Grace departing from America on a boat with the gangsters to dock on this place for a new set of adventures is not hard to imagine. (And that cave on the left side, oh, it makes me think that the island is hollow, with a huge, complex and dark underground).

Xana said to me once "Oh, I can't imagine how it must be for your father, living with you three (me, my sister and my mum), with all your matching haircuts and squiquy high-pitched voices."
I reasured her that my father didnt have problems with being the only man in the house. Specialy now, that me and Helena moved out. He doesn't even have to buy us tampons anymore and family shopping trips to the mall are much scarcer.

There's only certain moments when I admit we may put him in unconfortable situations. Last weekend was one of those:

When I went on erasmus, I messed up my suitcase right in the first days. The handle just broke as I was getting off the tram in Debrecen.
It was the first time I was taking a tram, and it was a very confusing trip right from the start. I was by myself, carrying a huge suitcase, afraid of missing the stop and didn't really know how to work with the puching machine.
Trying to hold my bag, not falling on my face and puching my ticket at the same time- I was getting the attention of everybody else in the tram.

Luckily, this extremelly tall american girl came to my help me. In her words: "You looked as confused as me the first time I had to ride one of this." We were both going to the language course.
She was really nice.

So, as I was getting out, the handle broke. I couldn't fix it there, but when I came back to Portugal I didn't do anything about it either.
Because I'm lazy.

permablogger

With the recent plans of moving to Vilnius, and having to use the suitcase again, the whole thing had to be rushed! I asked my dad to take it to the shop for repair, in Porto.
A few minutes after he left it there, they called saying the suitcase had some things in it.

Turns out I wasn't just lazy about fixing it, I was lazy unpacking, too
So my father went back to the store and, besides a buch of papers and a raincoat, they handed him this:

a pink bra
(with a dancing zebra on it, because when it comes to underwear I have the taste of a 12-years-old)

 a box of waxing strips

sanitary towels and makeup cleansers   
(I didn't really to know how to draw a makeup cleansers package, it looks weeeird.)








GAAAAAAAAAAH!!! HAHAH I'm so glad I wasn't there and he had to be embarrassed on my behalf!


*that's what parents are for*

Before I write about what happened, I need to explain something about myself:

I've always been the kind of person that wouldn't sing in front of other people. 

Except for birthday parties. The portuguese birthday song is so incredibly long, that there was always someone deciding to shake things up by starting to sing it a few seconds after everybody else. Others would follow and it normally resulted in noisy confusion of teenage voices singing Happy Birhtday, each to their own pace. I would happily sing in those caotic moments. Nobody could hear me. 

But besides that, never. I barely even sang by myself.  I mostly did it while blowing my hair, so the noise of the drier wouldnt let me hear it.

(the upside down blow is something I've been mastering over the years and does wonders to my hair.)

But, why, you ask, did I do that? 
Why did I so strictly hide my voice from the world? Even from myself?

Well, simply: because my voice was terrible.

In fact, it still is.


But I eventually realised that my awfull singing skills were kind of funny and not that embarrasing. I learned to love that about myself and stop worrying about being heard.
























Of course, this wasnt a sudden self-aceptance moment full of rainbows and shiny unicorns, but a slow progress of starting to sing around the house, in front of my flatmates. Singing more times, by myself, while cooking. It eventually evolved to the point when this year, me and Sofia bought the subscription to the karaoke channel for our TV, ending all our parties singing Grease in the company of some other drunk friends.

But I believe the whole process of, hmm being ok with my singing, culminated when Mariana invited me to sing a part of a song in her band's next gig.

she asked ME
to SING
in PUBLIC
BY MYSELF

I freaked out for a while but said yes. Obviously! What other chance would I have to be invited to do such thing?

They play a sort of Tweepop meets Sesame Street kind of music. Not sure how to descrive it better. I was required not only to sing, but do it dressed as a tree. And the gig was in one of the trendiest art galleries in the city, run by two of my former college teachers.

All the ingredients for major embarrassment.

I felt apprehensive everytime there was a new person confirming their presence in the facebook event page. But I still wanted to do it!

We rehearsed together and the in the day of the concert I was there and I sang my little part.

Not really sure how it went. Mariana said it sounded better then in the rehearsals, but my mind went blank for those few seconds of singing. I only remember my knees were shaking.

After singing I glanced at Diogo. He had also been invited by Mariana to take part on that song.
He, like me, doesn't have any particular musical talent.
And he, like me, was dressed as a tree, and very nervous.
I could see him play the flute with trembling fingers.



now, for the sappy ending:

Looking at him play, I realised how lucky I am to be surrounded by this people, that make me feel safe enough to actually have the courage to do the sort of things that I would be mortified to do otherwise. 

It felt liberating.

We were a very jittery pair of trees, but I was really proud of us.

it all leads to lithuania - part 2

After that awakening trip from the grocery store, I decided to apply for an European Volunteer Project.
I felt I needed a change of scenery. To regain that excitement of moving to a completly new place! The journey! The thrill of the adventure! The wind in my hair!

Most projects I saw were in biological farms or doing activities with children and teenagers. Althought they seem like cool experiences, I wasn’t sure if I would be the right person to do those things.


So when I read about a project run by the Lithuanian Gay League,  I was really excited! It was perfect! It was in Vilnius. I would be living in a capital! In the Baltics! And doing stuff that isn’t that different from what I’ve been studying to do. And I could do projects! Artistic Projects!


So I sent them my cv and a joly good letter of motivation, and waited.

Next day, they called me on my phone, for an interview. They asked me about myself, my ideas and expectations, and told me more about the project and about the activities they did.
There was a point in the interview she mencioned Bowling Nights.

It honestly took all my self-control to keep me from screaming:

AAAAH ! I LOVE BOWLING!!
PLEASE PICK MEEEEE!!! PICK MEEEE!

I told myself: “cool down joana, be smooth… be smooth like a ninja… ” and kept talking like a normal person.

The next day they sent a message saying I was accepted in the programme.
All the smoothness was gone by then, and I did a victory dance,
alone,
with the cats staring at me.

As my first post I found necessary to let one thing clear: this template was not the first one.
Just so you know I was struggling days and nights in a tough journey to build a functional, clean and very 'ohmagothislooksgreatcushesadesigner' template. I failed.
I was so very proud of it, I wanted to share it with Joana, "look how beautiful aintnotonicha.tumblr.com is!".  There was even a smooth expanding about menu like IKEA drawers.
"tumblr? — said Joana — why tumblr?", like (Ins't that for hipsters?). This was the first of more cruel hints like "we won't have comments" or "oh, I can't highlight my text in yellow, make words bigger and make appear some unicorn glitter rain each time I scroll over the tittle just because of your cruel cascading stylesheet which is more like a boring anti-democratic statement of edition" (the last one she kept to herself).

Then she shot the deadly bullet into my heart, "lets make a blogger instead!".

And here we are with blue tittles, blogger bar, highlighted post dates and whatever you'd like to highlight. When it comes to Joana's comics I would do anything, even give up on my designer's principles, how sad… You know what they say, if you cannot beat them, then join'em. That's why I made a second version of this post that pushes to the limits the never ending editing possibilities of our new cascading stylesheet. Here it goes.

As my first post I found necessary to let one thing clear, this template was not the first one!

Just so you know I was struggling days and nights in a tough journey to build a functional,  c l e a n  and very 'ohmagodthislooksgreatcushesadesigner' template. I failed -_-

I was so very proud of it, I wanted to share it with Joana:

Look how beautiful aintnotonicha.tumblr.com is!

There was even a  s m o o t h  expanding about menu like IKEA drawers.

Tumblr?!(said Joana), why Tumblr?

Like (Ins't that for hipsters?!). This was the first of more cruel hints like "we won't have comments" or "oh,  I can't highlight my text in yellow, make words bigger and make appear some unicorn glitter rain each time I scroll over the tittle just because of your cruel cascading stylesheet which is more like a boring anti-democratic statement of edition" (the last one she kept to herself).

Then she shot the deadly bullet into my heart:

Lets make a Blogger instead!

And here we are with blue tittles, blogger bar  B ___________________, highlighted post dates and whatever you'd like to highlight. When it comes to Joana's comics I'll do anything, even give up on my  d e s i g n e r  ' s  principles, how sad… You know what they say, if you cannot beat them, then join'em.

it all leads to lithuania - part 1

College ended.

It actually ended.
I’m not a student. anymore!

It’s not like this year was that stressfull, to be honest. I can’t complain.
Nevertheless, the last weeks seemed to be a lot like this.

I was so relieved about ending it, that I didn't even worry about what I was going to do next.
Until I had a weird (probably caffeine-induced) moment of realisation, on my way back from the grocery store.

I was carrying the bags and suddenly thought: “I’ll never have student discounts on museums again.”

It freaked me out. I just stood there, in the middle of the street, frozen with the imminent responsabilities that come with being an independent adult.

I can’t rely on my parents to pay me everything anymore.

I lost my student health insurance.

oh god I’m fucked.