glu glu

Two dancers in black briefs saunter hand-in-hand down a dock. They wear sparkly gold shopping bags over their heads. Suddenly, the screen is filled by a striped shirt stretched taut over a potbelly.

"Is a dance project," explains the undeniably Italian cameraman, ushering the bewildered belly out of the shot, "Contemporary dance project!"

A shared peal of laughter, an inside joke. Artists and amateurs, sitting cross-legged in an airy room of the splendid Museu do Oriente.

Complicity.

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Déjà vu.

Grade 8, 9, 10.... Amman or Dubai, maybe Cairo, one of those international schools. It's the first night of the arts festival: the showcase. We strut and show, so that the next morning we can get down to the dirty business of working, creating together.

Pointe to Point is a project bringing together 20 young choreographers from Europe and Asia. The Lisbon phase is their first real meeting. The public is invited to participate in their introductions, to meet the artists as individuals before they form groups and begin to collaborate. Over the weekend everyone shared something: a short dance piece, a presentation of previous work, installations, videos, conversations.

Like our high school showcases. Thankfully, no American School of Dubai-style cheesy jingles. (EMAC Fine Arts Festival, Festival, is full of fun/EMAC Fine Arts Festival, and we are ASD!!)

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This project is co-organised by the Asia-Europe Foundation and alkantara, the Portuguese independent arts organisation that makes my heart skip a beat. If all goes well, I will be their most enthusiastic intern next year and their festival will be the topic of my thesis.

As exciting as everything I saw this weekend was, I couldn't help feeling overwhelmed. What can I possibly offer these people? There were so many of them, young, all with haircuts more assymmetric than mine.

The pond is turning out to be a bit bigger than this little fish thought.