After a beautiful Sunday picnic at Parc de la Tête d’Or, we are well into our first week of dance events, and our pace has picked up in every way. I teach a class in la danse contemporaine every Mon., Tues., Wed. from noon until 2 PM at a place called TDMI (Theatre Dance Musique Image).

In addition to our group of ten, there are also ten students from TDMI in the class. They are very nice and friendly and have a variety of experience levels that work well with our own mixed level group. The dance space has a wooden floor and huge windows that look out over the surrounding buildings, and there’s a garden on the roof that we’ve been able to use for lunch and discussions after class. I find that I’m teaching a kind of bilingual class--very good for my French!

The students have begun their supplemental French language classes at Lyon Bleu, and are finding their teacher Stéphanie, along with the rest of the people there, to be très sympathique. There is also internet and wifi to use in a student lounge and a machine for espresso and cappuccino, something that seems to show up here wherever there are students.

We saw our first performance on Monday night. It took place at a venue called Le Transbordeur on the north side of the city. This venue was once a factory and was transformed into a large black box theater with a lovely café attached to it. The company, Wayne McGregor/Random Dance, is from Britain, and they were phenomenally skilled and athletic dancers. The choreography was dynamic and eccentric and results from McGregor’s interest in how the brain and body communicate.

Tuesday was our second grand cooking event for which Lisa cooked the chicken with garlic and dill! (We have a photo to prove it---along with one of the park, and the flower sculpture in Place Poncet.)