Sorry it has been so long since my last update. Life has been quite crazy! Ira took the long trip from Rhode Island (where he has been dancing with the Island Moving Company) to kaunas to visit me. OF course he only had a couple of days to rest from his trip and adjust to Lithuanian time before we were thrown head first into rehearsals for a new piece by Johannes wieland for the New Baltic international dance festival. The rest of the company had already learned about 20 minutes of choreography (for a 30 minute piece) and we had only a couple of days to be worked into the piece. Johannes arrived only three days before the performance. So Ira and I spent all that week in the studio working our butts off from 11am-10pm. JOhannes's work is technically challenging, has intricate movements, unusal timing and complex spacial patterns. I really enjoyed working with him, even though it wasn't in the best of circumstances. He has a wonderfully sweet personality, a really sharp eye for movement, and demands incredible percision from his dancers. Unlike other choreographers he refuses to show us any movement (to avoid having everything look the same), and instead uses very specific verbal diretions to create movement. I feel like I learned alot from him, and hope that I will have another chance to do so in the future. Of course the long days were exhasting and the pace of work brutal. JOhannes arrived on monday night, we performed friday night, rehearsed Aceptic Zone and Extremum Mobile on Saturday and Sunday, and then left for germany monday morning. Today I am in Frankfurt, performing at the mousontrum (which has been lovely) and tomorrow I will travel to dusseldorf to perform at the tanzhaus. Then we go to dortmund next week, and after that I am parting with the company (who is returning to LT) to meet Ira for a week vacation in Paris. After that he returns to the states, and I go back to LT to rehearse with Aura for an upcoming performance in St. Petersburg in June. Sometimes I can't believe that this is really my life. The words seem so strange and unbelieveable when I write them down, and yet so normal in my every day. I have so much more to tell you, but I have to run and eat before it is time for our warm-up at 6. -Claire