Beijing International Art School

Hello there! I’m writing this from inside an airplane on my way back to Beijing. I took a lovely holiday trip to Vietnam to spend Christmas with my good friend Nadia. She was my freshman roommate in college and remains a very good friend of mine. She spent most of her childhood in Vietnam and decided to return there after graduating to work at an international school. We had a great time – it was the perfect holiday with massages and parties, cookie baking and mulled wine drinking! She has a truly international community there, and I tried foie grois for the first time and learned that gingerbread houses are only tradition in America.

But now I’m on my way back to Beijing and I’m excited to get back to training. My first week or so in Beijing was un-impressive, with regards to my school. I wasn’t allowed to move in when I had planned on, and once I moved in I wasn’t able to start training for logistical reasons that seem to be half made-up. Then, my second day of training, two of my three coaches weren’t there. However, since then I have come to truly love training! To put it simply, the administrative side of the school is a mess (and I haven’t gone one week without getting extremely frustrated with one complication or another) but the coaches are lovely and the training is intense!

Let me give you a look at my schedule so you can have an idea of what it’s like:

8:30-9:30: Flexibility

We warm up on our own, and then the pushing begins! The first few days I had a coach stretch me it felt horrifying, but now my body has adjusted it and I’ve come to really appreciate it. Not that it doesn’t still hurt (because yes! It does!) but I can feel that it’s really increasing my flexibility and I trust that they know what they’re doing.

9:30-10:30: Handstands

I have two different handstand classes every day; in the morning we focus on two-arm handstands and in the afternoon we do one-arm drills. The style here is very focused on conditioning and endurance; there is little attention to form and we don’t’ drill any shapes other than the straight basic one. I was a little bit frustrated by this at first, but now I’ve come to appreciate it. I can keep myself accountable for technique and it will give me a great base of strength. The next two handbalancing coaches I will be working with in my travels are extremely technique-focused, so I’m viewing this chapter as a way to get strength and endurance so I will be ready for them to come in and fine tune it all.

10:30-11:30 Aerial hoop

I’ve never been particularly drawn to aerial hoop, but it is the only aerial apparatus they offer and I decided to take it to keep up my aerial strength and to learn another discipline. I’ve really been enjoying it – it feels much more playful than handstand training and (when I have enough energy) it feels like childlike fun! However, now that I’ve been at the school for a month, I’m thinking about switching out of my aerial hoop class and adding another hour of handstands. Handbalancing is my focus and I never have enough time to get through all of the drills my coach and I want to. Also, the Chinese don’t do a lot of aerial and my aerial hoop coaches’ have a limited vocabulary of tricks. I’ve learned their set sequences already and could easily train it on my own during lunch… I haven’t decided yet, though.

11:30-2:30 Lunch break

I’m not quite sure why the school thought a three-hour lunch break was necessary, but we all appreciate it and take advantage of the opportunity to nap! Really, I think that all of the international students make a daily tradition of napping… The days that I skip a nap I notice it in my energy, and also in my stiff and sore muscles – I think it is good recovery time.

If I switch out of my morning aerial hoop class, I will just take a 2-hour lunch break and independently do hoop from 1:30-2:30

2:30-3:30 Handstands

In this second class my coach has me focusing on one-arms. When we first started this arrangement, she had me just holding endurance one-arms on one arm, then the other, back and forth for an hour. I’ve asked her for some other drills and now we do endurance one-arms with her spotting me, one-arm drills with me on my own balance, and sometimes a few different body shapes. I have so much fun in these classes. My coach is really light-hearted and friendly, and she is willing to work with tricks that she can tell I want. She gets enthusiastic about things if I am enthusiastic about it.

3:30-4:30 Bounce Juggling

This is the only class I have where there are also Chinese kids present, and these Chinese students are incredible! They are all juggling 7 or 9 balls and then will do that while standing on someone else’s back while that person is in a handstands, or while arching over backwards. The coach for juggling is a character – he has a shaved head and smells of cigarettes, is pretty stoic, but then he will get so excited about juggling! It’s clear that he really loves it. He is also the most demanding of the coaches, which I appreciate. Whereas the other coaches will take their cues off of us and let us rest more if we are tired that day, this coach treats us more in the way he coaches the Chinese students. Once I went to grab a ball that had rolled away and I paused for a moment watching a contortionist train in the other room. He noticed my 15-second pause and barked over to me to get back to training. The other Western student and I are scolded if we are chatting in class; in fact, the very first Chinese phrase I learned by sheer repetition was “more training!”

6ish – 9ish: Evening Training

After dinner and a short rest, most of the foreign students go back to the training room for some open gym time. I’m using this time to fill in the gaps in my handstand training of the day (like I said: we never have enough time to get to everything!) and do some contortion training as well. My back is feeling much better. There is still a small amount of passive pain, but I’m back in training contortion and it feels great to be able to do that again.

After one month here, I do feel progress. I’m juggling five balls, learned a whole new vocab on aerial hoop and my oversplits are improving. It’s harder to feel improvement in handstands, since progress is more subtle, but I am holding my handstands for thirty more seconds than when I arrived and I’m slowly adding more reps to the conditioning drills we do.

All in all, I’m really enjoying it! Every day I return back to my dorm exhausted, but happy. I spend every class happy to be there. I feel so lucky to have this opportunity, and even when the training is painful or frustrating, I still find it truly fun.

Hey everyone! I’m in China! I spent the majority of my 24th birthday on the Trans-Mongolian train, passing hours and hours of brown Gobi grass spotted with some grey, aging towns. I arrived in Beijing just a couple of days ago, and I was taken aback by how beautiful I found it! With green trees and expansive parks and charming alleyways with little shops, I settled on the word “vibrant” to describe it. I was lucky to have chosen a hostel in the historic part of town, so my first impression was particularly favorable (I’ve since wandered through the business districts and the sprawling outskirts and my initial impression has been tempered, but not destroyed). If I were freshly comparing Beijing to my beloved Portland or Seattle, I’m sure it would seem a bit dreary, but in comparison to Ulanbaatar it feels like a lush oasis.

I took my time the past few days getting to know the city – hitting a few tourist sights, but mainly spending my time walking around, wandering, exploring. Also, I’ve been making sure I’m taking enough time to rest, in this time of transition. I think I drove my body to the ground at the end in Mongolia, not wanting to rest too much for fear of not taking advantage of my time there. This is my fourth day of self-prescribed rest, and I still have gnarly knots and sore muscles!

Tomorrow I will head over to the WuQiao International Circus Festival in a city a couple hours away. I will be there for a few days, staying with a troupe of contortionists I trained with in Mongolia that are there to compete! Afterwards, my lovely parents are coming to visit! I will take a short “vacation” from my grant to travel down south with them for a little bit before heading back to Beijing, getting settled at my school, and starting training!

I’m very excited for training at my school here: today I took the subway over to visit the campus. A Canadian student was able to take a couple of hours to show me around campus. My first impression was “it’s a real school!” It’s a gated campus with a basketball court, a green lawn, fountains, statues, and multiple buildings for academic classes, administration and dorms. Then, of course, are the training spaces. I should have counted how many different rooms and gyms there were for training, at least ten or twelve. There is an aerial gym, a few large gyms, one professional space where the acrobatic troupe rehearses their shows, and a few handfuls of other smaller rooms for tumbling, handstands, contortion, dance, and juggling. The equipment seems a little faded and the paint on the wall is peeling here and there, but it was still so inspiring!

I was able to talk to a few of the students, and it seems like the structure of the school is pretty unorganized for international students, but everyone is still enjoying their time regardless. I will be able to choose my disciplines and I will be assigned a coach for each. It sounds like a lot of the classes have been unsatisfying for the international students, but everyone says that the flexibility and handstand training is incredible. Since that’s what I’m here for, I lucked out! They also say that the bounce jugglers are fantastic, so I’m going to continue training in this new interest of mine!

Talking with the other students about their contortion classes made me think, “well, maybe if I just stretch a little bit I can still train contortion,” and I immediately had to rein that in. It’s going to be hard to commit to resting my back when I’m surrounded by people stretching and training, but it’s obvious that that’s what I need! I need to be just as disciplined with resting as I am with training.

Anyway, I’m very excited to be here! I’m enjoying my time in the city, taking my time to build a relationship with Beijing and repair my relationship with my body, and I’m happy to look forward to a new phase of training.

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Writing this update about Beijing makes me realize that I didn’t really do justice to my experience in Mongolia in my blog posts! I didn’t write about my time visiting the nomadic herding family, I didn’t pen any characterizations of the different studios I trained in, and I didn’t update about the bounce juggling performance (in short: it was fun! No bounce balls ended up in the wedding cake and no vodka bottles were knocked over. Success! I was also able to stay and watch the rest of the wedding. By the end of the night, I was dancing with my coach, had magically become best friend’s with her aunt, and had someone take a picture with me because they thought I looked exotic).

I don’t quite have the energy to do a retrospective blog post, but feel free to email me if you have any questions or want any more details! I can’t actually access Blogspot now that I’m in China (my family is posting this for me), but I can still see your comments and I love them!

I’ll post a bunch of Mongolian photos with this one, to make up for my lack of narrative!

The lady on the far right is my Mongolian coach! This is a picture from the '80s when she was performing in Switzerland.

Dulguun and I getting ready for our bounce juggling gig!

Practicing "god's hands," traditional Mongolian contortion choreography. This choreography mimics traditional Buddhist statues, specifically of the taras. (That's my coach in the back!)

A training pic

A group picture, taken after I taught our last English lesson! (I taught English to the kids from the studio every weekend day - it was so cute! My last day at training, I noticed Oga, the 4 year old with the pigtails in the photo, was over in the corner doing her sit-ups, and she was counting them aloud in English! It was a moment of teacher pride, for sure.)

I learned to milk goats with the nomadic family! I finally got the two-hand rhythm down, but I would never get as speedy as those women!

The inside of one of the family's yurts. One of the granddaughters came to visit from the city, "Oh yeah, she's a contortionist," and here's the proof! Really, it's just that common...

Out in the countryside. Yes, it is actually that beautiful...

Bounce juggling!

"What do you call an injured contortionist?"

I thought about holding an informal competition among my friends to find the punchline to this joke...after realizing that my back injury is not just inflamed muscles but actually a bulging disc, I've been trying to keep my sense of humor about the irony of the situation: I'm hit with an injury that prevents me from training exactly that which I'm here to train!

Well, it turns out I don't need to hold the competition because the punchline has revealed itself to me:

-What do you call an injured contortionist?
-A bounce juggler.

Let me explain: My coach is one of the few coaches in Mongolia that teaches a multitude of circus arts, not just contortion. She has a trapeze and aerial fabric in her studio, and also teaches tap dance, hula hoop and juggling. I started bounce juggling when I got here and absolutely loved it! Something about juggling speaks to my focused personality, and since we use bouncy-balls training feels like playtime. About a week ago, my coach was commenting on how much I've learned and said that I'm ready to put together an act (Yikes! I don't feel ready at all!). She started daydreaming about what type of act to make, but we didn't follow through with it.

Well, just yesterday Bilgee told me that she found a performance for me, at one of her relative's wedding! Since my back is still healing, one of my classmates will do contortion, but I will have the opportunity to perform juggling.

Oh dear. Please keep in mind: I have only been juggling for two months! I thought very briefly about trying to weasel my way out of it- saying I'm too nervous, I don't feel ready - but I quickly reined that in. This is the type of experience I'm here to say "yes" to! If she thinks I'm ready to perform bounce juggling at a Mongolian wedding, then by golly... With only a week until the performance, we started choreographing yesterday ("we" because this will be a duo act with my 13-year-old classmate). The process has been great fun so far: it's nice to be working in collaboration with my classmate, experimenting with new tricks, encouraging each other, messing up together. I think I may be giving myself tendonitis from too much juggling, though, which feels like it should be the punchline of another joke (anyone want to finish that one for me?)



So there it is, folks: Next Friday, October 14th, 2011 will be my international juggling debut. Wish me luck!



I'll send you off with a cute, but unrelated, photo from training.

"UB Modern Circus"

What's better than doing contortion with 10-year-olds?
Doing ballet with 6-year-olds.

I recently asked my coach if she had any suggestions for dance classes in Ulaanbaatar. I know it's one of my weaknesses as a performer and figured it would be a nice thing to focus on as I'm letting my lower back heal from an injury I sustained over the summer (no contortion for a few weeks! Only handstands, juggling, and now dance classes) My coach called up one of her ex-students who then went on to attend a dance academy and now owns a studio that teaches contortion, hula hooping and dance. She invited me to come over to her studio whenever and she would teach me ballet.

My coach, Bilgee, helped me find the place, and good thing. We wandered through a few building before we found the correct cement staircase, then wandered around a dimly-lit hallway until we found the correct door. Upon opening the door, we found an expansive and well-lit studio with hard-wood floor and a large mirror. The students from the morning class were rehearsing their choreography - they were doing advanced partner contortion poses and highly technical hula hooping routines.



Like at our studio, she has a morning class and an afternoon class, and the students attend whichever works with their school schedule. I arrived during the hour-long break between groups, so she led me through some barre work, correcting my form along the way. She is a lovely archetype of a ballet teacher - she smacked my bum to remind me to tilt my pelvis and flicked my shoulders to remind me to pull them down. A very friendly and vibrant young woman and she is very committed to the aesthetics of classical ballet. We jogged to warm up and we even had to jog like a ballerina: on our toes, with our shoulders down and back.

She pulled over one of the students to demonstrate some leaps and turns. The coach told the student that I spoke Mongolian, told me that this students was "very good" and assigned the student to teach me correct form. At seven years old, this girl was the senior student of the class and she took her role very seriously. She made sure to correct my toe point and tap my upper back when I wasn't holding my posture correctly. If I got the end of the floor without doing enough turns, she told me "two more." While she was very focused and straight-faced, I realized that I had a goofy grin on my face - I was happy to be working on ballet, which is very good for me, I was excited to be in seeing another studio with a group of talented young girls, and I was tickled about being drilled by my 7-year-old coach.

Solvitur ambulando

The taxi system in Ulaanbaatar is a unique one and I like to think it reflects a Mongolian practicality and hospitality. While there are professional taxi services, complete with yellow cars and calling cards and distance meters, it’s much more common to be picked up by a private car. Anyone and everyone can be a taxi in Ulaanbaatar, the only requirement a car. I’ve come to appreciate the practicality of this system: I have a resource that you need, so let’s make a deal. Of course there’s a safety concern in the back of my head regarding this unregulated system but it seems to go quite well: the worst story I’ve heard is that foreigners are consistently overcharged. I didn’t feel comfortable taking a taxi until I had my bearings on the geography of the city and knew a few key Mongolian words, but now it feels pretty straight-forward.

I’m motivated to write this entry because of my most recent taxi ride, in which the driver tried to convince me to let him be my boyfriend. This awkward conversation was made all the more so because I hadn’t learned the Mongolian word for “boyfriend.” When I finally figured it out I laughed and said “Oh, I already have a boyfriend,” (the classic defense for unwanted suitors). His response: “Oh, that’s okay – you could have two!” No, no, but thanks anyway.

The first taxi ride I got up the gumption to do, I was picked up by two young men listening to Western pop songs. It was around dinnertime on a weekend, so I realized that my taxi ride was probably funding their night out.

So far I’ve had one grumpy driver, but mostly they’ve been friendly at the least and often chatty. This may be the location where I get the most Mongolian practice, as a matter of fact. On one memorable taxi ride the driver asked me the usual “where are you from, why are you here” questions, but when I mentioned Seattle he lit up. “My older brother lived in Seattle!” Oh really? That’s nice, it’s a beautiful city. What I didn’t notice was that he was dialing his cell phone, and when he got someone on the line he handed the phone to me, saying “Angli-hel! Angli-hel!” (English! English!) Sure enough, he had called up his brother so that we could…chat about Seattle? It went something like this: Oh you lived in Seattle? It’s beautiful. Yeah, okay…we’re at my stop now, I have to go.

I’ve been picked up by old married couples that continue their chatting and bickering with me in the back seat. I’ve had rides from small families. I can imagine the conversation when they see me on the side of the road, arm out, fingers down, “Well, honey, should we give her a ride?” “Oh sure, why not? We have time, it’s not the kid’s bedtime yet.”

I’ve been turned down by drivers, as well, after I tell them where I want to go. “Oh sorry, I’m not going in that direction.” If you’re headed home from work and stuck in traffic, you may as well have some company in the back seat and make a couple bucks while you’re at it.

Have I mentioned the traffic yet? It’s horrendous. There are too many cars and too many potholes and too many behind the wheel. Cars will regularly drive over sidewalks, do U-turns in the middle of a busy road, speed up when a pedestrian tries to cross the street, drive in between the middle of two lanes of traffic, then honk angrily at another car when they do the same. One day I counted five fender-benders. Luckily for pedestrian me, the traffic is often so backed-up that you can waltz across the street between cars that are practically parked. Otherwise, it’s a game of depth perception and courage to cross the street. I spent the first few weeks always waiting for a local Mongolian to fall in step with, but I feel a sense of pride to notice that at times I’m the one that Mongolians fall in step with.

Mongolia has helped me to appreciate honking as a means of communication (“Coming through!” “The light is green!” or even “Outta my way!”) but I will never be able to appreciate the honk of a car stuck in traffic, honking at other cars stuck in traffic (and this happens all the time! Again, Mongolia is the providing to be the perfect training ground in my pilgrimage for patience…)


The bus system is quite effective, if at times overwhelming. A number of bus lines run all around the city, it’s only a matter of figuring out which number goes where (there are no convenient bus guides to explain it all), then suffering the pollution, horrendous stop-and-go driving and crammed spaces until you get to your stop. Mongolia has no “queue-ing culture” to speak of, so getting on and off the bus can be an adventure for sure, and once you’ve made it on the bus, you may be crammed shoulder to shoulder. Mongolia is not the first place I’ve been on crammed public transit, but such intense closeness still seems unnatural and bizarre. With so many people packed in together, I’ve found myself face-to-face with people’s dandruff, examining someone’s cuticles or absent-mindedly studying the weave on someone’s clothing. I zone out and realize I’m making eye contact with someone across the way. And the push-and-shove philosophy is exacerbated with such crowds – there are no “excuse me”s on Mongolian busses – you literally push your way to where you need to go.

Just today I was lucky to get a seat on the bus on my way home from training, but then a duo of high school teens entered the bus and stood right above me. This would have been no problem, except that they were munching on a bag full of pine nuts. Pine nuts are very popular here, and vendors sit with a huge bag of the dark red nuts and sell them by the cup. At this point, they are still in their shells, so a favorite Mongolian snack and pastime is munching on the pine nuts, cracking the shells open and eating the nut inside. Well, considering the lack of personal space, these girls standing above me on the bus had no qualms about throwing their pine nut shells out the open window above my head. And yes, one or two shells fell in my lap. And no, they didn’t seem to notice or mind.

There have been a few times when the lack of personal space has an encouraging outcome. More than once, I’ve seen anonymous hands reach out on a bumpy bus to help an old man as he hobbles to the door. I’ve seen a sea of supportive strangers protect a baby’s head as his momma is trying to sit down. As much as I try, it’s hard to keep these beautiful images in mind, though, as you have elbows in your ribs amidst the rush…

My apartment, however, is about a 20 minute walk to the nearest bus line and only a 30 minute walk to the center, so I find myself walking quite often. Walking is relaxing and a nice relief from the traffic as I find myself passing scores of cars stalled and honking. But walking isn’t without its hazards. Along with the aforementioned street-crossing caution, you have to pay particular attention to each step as unfinished construction sites abound in the city. I can’t quite figure out what sort of city planning is happening that will start one sidewalk project when it has left upended cement blocks and open manholes on a previous project a few streets down. Every time I walk to the center, I trek up and down miniature mountain ranges of unused dirt, pick my way around fjords of litter and hop over small canyons – plumbing projects left gaping? Sometimes I truly can’t decipher the history of all the sidewalk mishaps.

I hope I don’t sound like I’m complaining, though. All in all I’m doing pretty well at keeping an adventurer’s brain – conquering those construction sites like Marco Polo wove through the Silk Road!! Or at least keeping a sense of humor about it all. I feel lucky to have travelled in developing countries before – disrepair in and of itself is no longer shocking or offensive.

One day, as I was walking along the streets with a friend of mine, another American, he said, “you are going to have such intense culture shock when you get back to the States!” I laughed and asked him what made him say that. He pointed at an open manhole we had just passed, with piles of abandoned cobblestones nearby. I laughed even more because, either focusing on traffic or lost in thought, I hadn’t even noticed it.


More soon. <3

Photos!

I met a UK photographer who is in UB completing a project for his master's degree - he's trying to capture a portrait of the city. I invited him along to photograph class, which was exciting for him, flattering for my coach, and the kids LOVED it! Here are some photos (all photo credit to Tom Gildon):



My favorite part of this photo is the flopping three-year-old on the end (a new student, she's only had one week of classes so far!)



The 13-year-old who dreams of going to L'Ecole Nacional de Cirque in Montreal when she graduates from high school. I've taught her some moves on trapeze and it's unbelievable how fast she learns - watch for her in the international circus scene in six years or so!



Oga, who is 4 years old, won a medal in the district talent show for her traditional Mongolian contortion routine. Having recently taught circus to a lot of 4-year-olds, I'm often awestruck at how focused and disciplined she is in class...



One of the many enticing abandoned rooms in our building. The building used to be a factory in the communist times - recently, a large mining company bought the building and remodeled the lobby and the sixth floor for their offices. The rest of the floors are a treasure hunt of industrial spaces (with the hidden mecca of our circus studio nestled in there!)

Training

Well, the promised “one-week update” has become a “three-week update…” Considering I’ve only committed to one blog post per country, I’m doing pretty well, though! Also, it looks as though I'll have to write this upcoming epic blog post in segments (so much to update on!), so I may as well post it in segments as well. Here is an update on training! Check back for a reflection on the city and the country (and get excited about sheep guts!)


Training:

Is absolutely lovely. It is physically and mentally challenging, a cultural and emotional experience, and fun and light-hearted to boot! I am by far the odd one out among my classmates, not least because I'm from the US - the oldest student is fourteen and the youngest if four! The oldest is Dulguun, she has a very nice hula hoop/contortion act and has a bounce juggling/tap dance routine that I haven't seen yet. She wants to be in Cirque du Soleil and was going to go to the States for a summer with Circus Smirkus (www.smirkus.org) but she didn’t get her visa in time. The youngest student in class is her younger sister, all of four years old. She is very bendy and has a surprising amount of focus for a kid that young. She has been training for about 8 months and won an award at her school district's talent show for a traditional Mongolian contortion act. Oh! I have to correct that – today in class, Bilgee started a new student – three years old, now the youngest in class. It was very sweet to see her have her very first day of contortion training – our coach, Bilgee, had her do some stretches (constantly reminding her to straighten her knees), some strengthening exercises (she could finish a few pull-ups all by herself!) and then she played with the hula hoops. The entire time Bilgee was very encouraging, gave lots of positive feedback and the whole class clapped when she did something well.

In fact, that’s something that surprised and delighted me: there is such a positive and playful environment in the studio! Students will clap for each other when they get something that’s new for that student or if they do something particularly well. I’m sure that environment is largely a product of Bilgee’s coaching – she does scold when children are doing something incorrectly or unsafely but she is very encouraging overall. In fact, the first phrase I learned by repetition is “sain bain:” well done! (Well, that may be competing for first place with “oovtogee:” straighten your knees!)

Similarly, I’ve been impressed with how self-motivated the kids are. We all do general warm-ups together, and then follow more or less the same structure (legs, back, handstands), but everyone is working at their own level and at their own pace within the structure. On the whole, these kids know what they should be doing and do it. They will spot each other on drills and help each other stretch and do their intense drills without being prodded.

As for me: I’m learning a lot! I let her know that I want work hard on handstands and drill one-arms so, my goodness, we are working hard on handstands and, boy, are we drilling one-arms. Also, my back is continuing to heal so I am able to get back in to pushing contortion. I have already accomplished a handful of new tricks – some that I should have had a long time ago and some that I never even thought about. The coaching style is certainly different than working with coaches in the States – her training philosophy seems to be “drill it until you can do it.” Whereas training with Elena (my handbalancing coach in Seattle) had a lot of focus on technique and precision of form, with Bilgee I get bits of technique mixed in with loads and loads of just doing. And I can certainly feel myself getting stronger. I’m feeling more steady on my hands (or hand) every day and for the first two weeks I swear I felt like the Hulk: my upper back was so sore I could practically feel my muscles growing.
The first day we met Bilgee did self-reflectively say that she is not a “typical” Mongolian coach – she has taught and performed in Switzerland, Mexico and the States – and by her own description she said that Mongolian coaches tend to “yell a lot.” I am very curious to be able to observe other contortion studios and find out what are cultural commonalities or individual differences. I’m trying to suspend too much analysis until I’ve been able to observe more. Next week I’m hoping to connect with Bud, the most famous Mongolian contortion coach in the world (excuse the hyperbole: I mean it in all seriousness). He just got back in Mongolia after touring with his contortionists in Big Apple Circus on the East Coast. Bilgee also tells me that Norovsamboo will be back in town in September – she is half of the pair that re-introduced contortion into the national psyche after the communist era. Her partner, Tsend-Ayush, passed away a few years ago. I can’t wait to speak with Norovsamboo (now in her eighties) and hear her version of the confoundingly hazy history of Mongolian contortion.

I’ve been trying to find out as much as I can about the history and development of Mongolian contortion, and it seems to be quite the rubix cube. I feel like a detective trying to muddle through a problem – sometimes the pieces fit so well it feels like the entire picture will fall in place, but sometimes a new piece of information directly contradicts another one. (The process makes me very excited about doing research, to be honest, and I find myself entertaining visions of coming back to Mongolia for PhD research…) There’s certainly a very present conversation happening in all of Mongolia about traditionalism/modernization, local culture vs. globalization, and these are all evident in the practice of contortion as well. I’m still figuring it all out, hoping the puzzle pieces will continue to fit together.

And in the meantime, I’m training like I’ve never trained before! I keep thinking about how the Watson fellowship is supposed to be an “experiential” experience (as opposed to a purely academic one) and I always chuckle at how thoroughly I am experiencing. Every muscle in my body is experiencing this moment, as I’m sore and stiff! My elbows and knees are experiencing Mongolia as I spread Tiger Balm all over them – my shoulder and back are experiencing Mongolia as I self-massage by rolling on a tennis ball (I did this for an hour yesterday and was still stiff) – my calf was experiencing Mongolia in training today when it cramped up from a particularly intense stretch. My back is experiencing Mongolia when I spread sheep fat on it to loosen up the tightness (yup, I mean it: my coach brought a jar to training the other day and told me to rub it on the part of my body that are sore every night. Well…training five hours a day means that just about every part of my body is sore, so that’s a lot of sheep fat.)
So that’s that. It’s lovely.