Most days as I pedal across the Square Ambiorix in the early morning I see a lone Chinese man practising tai chi and the sight immediately whisks me back to Coal Hill Park in Beijing. To explain, a few years back we stayed in Beijing for a week and I got up early every morning to jog around the Forbidden City and Coal Hill Park. The early morning is a wonderful moment in the massive metropolis’s life. People hang up their bird cages in the trees and practice exercises of various sorts. Coal Hill Park in particular is a riot of groups practising everything from shuttlecock to ballroom dancing, from tai chi to flag dancing, sometimes to music, sometimes not. When I see the lone Chinese man in Square Ambiorix I wonder if he is not imagining company around him. In any case, by eight in the morning the people of Beijing are exercised and energised and if you left your hotel at eight-thirty (say) you wouldn’t realise just how much activity had been going on. It’s certainly worth getting up for.

Jolie

To the Kaaistudio this evening to watch Solid Gold and Jolie. The two solo dancers, Dinozord and Jolie Ngemi, are from Kinshasa, their work is choreographed by a Canadian, Ula Sickle, and the live sound track is created by French musician,  Yann Leguay. For me, this was a glorious success, set in the comfortable intimacy of the Kaaistudio. Dinozord comes from a hip hop background and puts this experience to good use, though his performance is a wittily expansive history of dance, passing through various styles. And Jolie, inspired by music videos and nightclub life, uses her voice and percussive vocal chords to lay down loops of rhythmic melody to which to dance. Part of me, having seen quite a bit of street dance and modern dance recently, was thinking ‘isn’t this a return to source?’ I thought of this guy, whom I once saw doing this. And where did he go to get his inspiration? In any case, it was splendid and the dancers were wonderful, projecting their bodies and their personalities with deceptive ease.

In a ghastly run of sad and bad news, yesterday evening we learnt of the sudden death of Zenonas Rokus Rudzikas, an active and much-liked and respected Lithuanian EESC member (Various Interests Group). He was President of the Lithuanian Academy of Science, one of the most prominent experts in theoretical physics in Lithuania and an acknowledged specialist in nuclear spectroscopy. He wore his learning lightly and was particularly modest about his scientific expertise and reputation. He was also a thoroughly nice man and a convinced and committed European who was instrumental in the establishment of the Lithuanian national economic and social council. Our deepest sympathies and condolences go out to his family, friends and colleagues. We will miss him.

This morning, together with my colleagues, team mates and fellow cyclists, Silvia Staffa, Fruzsina Dupas, Olivier Benoist and Zoltan Krasznai, I was interviewed by Dieter Snauwert, who works for an organisation called Bike to Work. From 29 May till 29 June some 400 teams are competing to see whether they can complete 50% or 70% of their journeys to and from work by bike. Since I always come and go on my bike, I would have been happy to aim at 100% but, anyway, the EESC Bee-cyclists (a name chosen by Zoltan, who keeps bees) are well on target. Dieter wanted to know how we felt about cycling in Brussels. For my part, as a longer-term resident, I think there has been a remarkable and entirely positive evolution in the way cyclists and bicycles are treated in the city. That has a lot to do with the fact that there is now a flourishing local democracy and government and the new, more bicycle-friendly city is, indeed, a good illustration of the importance of local government. Long may the positive evolution continue! (And here’s the link to Dieter’s finished article.)

This afternoon I gave a talk on the European Citizens’ Initiative to a group of about sixty visiting Italian students from the political science faculty of the LUISS University (Rome). They had come to Brussels to participate in a simulation of the EU legislative process leading to the adoption of the implementing regulation. My talk therefore came in between a simulated meeting of COREPER and the first, simulated, ‘trilogue’. I tried to situate the Initiative in the broader history of the European integration process, from the disappointments of the constitutionalist  ‘big bang’ approach in the 1950s, to the pragmatic Monnet method of incremental development, and from the technocratic to the increasingly political. The Union’s first response to the growing ‘democratic deficit’ was parliamentary – direct elections to (1979) and then legislative powers for (1986) the European Parliament. The Treaty provisions arising out of the Convention and culminating in the Lisbon Treaty (implemented December 2009) complemented this with what I like to term a ‘composite democracy’. Now juxtaposed with representative democracy (the European Parliament, the national parliaments) are participatory democracy (structured dialogue with organised civil society) and direct democracy (which is where the Citizens’ Initiative comes in).

EESC Vice-President and Budget Group Chairman, Jacek Krawczyk

To today’s typical Monday meeting rhythm (management board in the morning) was added an afternoon meeting of the Committee’s Budget Group. The Group met, under the Chairmanship of Vice-President Jacek Krawczyk (Employers’ Group, Polish), primarily to prepare a series of decisions with financial ramifications for next week’s meeting of the EESC’s Bureau, but it also discussed a number of strategic issues. Starting in October 2008, the Committee has embarked on a root-and-branch reform of its financial and budgetary operational management, involving centralisation of all such affairs within one Directorate at administrative level and a decentralisation to the various ‘spending actors’ (the Groups, the Sections, etc) at political level. In part, therefore, the Budget Group also considered how to fine tune a number of aspects arising out of the transition to this new decentralised approach.

For the past three days I have acted as chauffeur, cook, washer, photographer and general gofor for N° 1 sprog as she entered the final rehearsals for a dance show that took place this afternoon. I enjoyed every minute of it – indeed, loved the whole experience, especially when we got into things like lights and dress rehearsals. Whenever I go ‘backstage’ I find myself back in my own experiences as an amateur actor (now in the distant past): the greasepaint, the costumes, the backroom teams, darting efficiently about. And can there be anything more satisfying than that moment, lived vicariously through N° 1 sprog’s experience, when the whole thing ‘clicks’? It was a resounding success, further enlivened by two guest appearances by an up-and-coming professional dance company, Opinion Public. It’s worth a visit to their site to see the clips. We’ll surely hear more about them.

To the Kaai Theatre this evening to see Michèle Anne de Mey’s Neige (2009), a piece for five dancers, performed to occasional extracts from the allegreto of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. You can see a video extract here. Mmmm… The Westlake jury is still out on this one. The mise-en-scène is the first star of the show. Snowflakes fall endlessly on stage, covering the dancers’ tracks and the dancers themselves. An almost invisible screen contains the flakes but nevertheless creates a barrier between the performers and the audience. The dancers are typically brilliant. The tale they tell is one of the power and inter-relationship of sentiments from love through to jealousy, from friendliness through to hate  – ultimately, they dance from life to death (and back again). Was it our imagination or did the mise-en-scène end up getting in the way of the creation? After all, it’s not the sort of set you can just take down and stow in the wings, so once it’s up you’ve got to stick with it. So stick with it we, and the dancers, did. And that’s why the Westlake jury is out. To be fair, there were no snowball fights (though one fistful of snow was thrown) and no snowmen, but the impression grew upon us that this was somehow a production to be seen in still images, and that the dancing in between was precisely that, and that would be monstrously unfair on the dancers and on the choreography. Put another way, I think I would be happy to see Neige again, only without the neige.

Having seen the film several times over the years, the famous twist in the tail of M. Night Shyamalan‘s The Sixth Sense is no longer much of a twist at all for me, but this 1999 psychological thriller is still good entertainment. A child psychologist , Dr Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), is shot by a patient he has treated for hallucinations. Crowe goes on to treat another similarly-afflicted boy, Cole Sear (played by Haley Joel Osment). Crowe gradually realises that the boy is not delusional but can truly see ‘dead people’ – ghosts. At the same time, the work-obsessed Crowe fears that his marriage is suffering. The twist is that Crowe himself is dead. Clever editing sustains the illusion that the dead Crowe is interacting with his widow and his environment, but the only person he truly interacts with is the boy. I forget who it was who advised all actors to avoid appearing alongside children and animals. Willis more than holds his own but, after several viewings, the star of this show is undoubtedly Haley Joel Osment. Surely the ancestor of this type of story is Edgar Allan Poe’s The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether, but I’d better not give away two endings…

There ain't half been some...

I have a deal with N° 2 sprog whereby I read every book he reads. His favourite author at the moment is Marcus Sedgwick and I have just finished his 2008 The Kiss of Death, succinctly summarised in the blurb as being about ‘Venice and vampires’. I am full of admiration for children’s authors like Sedgwick who manage somehow to keep ‘brand loyalty’ whilst ranging far and wide in historical, geographical and even purely imaginative terms. I am also deeply envious of somebody who, as the homepage of his website makes clear, is doing something he loves. He also gives sage advice about the importance of finishing things. For writing, as John Boyle, one of the members of my writers’ workshop once put it, is about re-writing.