Craving the Elusive

The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its essential quality of being the present. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings. ~ Agnes Martin

When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about. ~ Albert Einstein

Be careful how you interpret the world: It is like that. ~ Erich Heller

***

Normally, when I have a craving for something, it is very easy for me to figure out what it is and fulfill it quickly. I am an excellent craving satisfier.

Today's cravings:

Taste: salt
Touch: silk
Sight: luminous light
Smell: amber
Sound: Chopin's Nocturnes

***

On Sunday, I had a craving for something and I had no idea what it was.

brief, evanescent, fleeting, momentary, passing, short, temporary, transient, transitory, unenduring, vague

***

By happenstance, I found a notice of a ballet performance, just one of two performances by the Inbal Pinto Dance Company, touring select cities. This ballet company is from Israel. I had never heard of them before, but once I read about the show, Shaker, I knew that I should see it.

Perhaps it was my escape from the week's hyper-reality and hyper-unreality of bad news and work and politics and fatigue of the mind. Perhaps it was that this troupe of talented dancers, being ambassadors of something more transient than "reality" but more necessary--beauty--that I wanted to help welcome them to my city and appreciate their talents by witnessing them.

Yes, I think it was that.

***

Shaker takes place inside a fantasy world, inside a snowglobe.

When I see something very special or beautiful, part of my heart aches that I don't have all of you with me to see it too. So all I can do is try to describe it as best I can, and hope that someday you might see something like this too, and tell me about it.

***

From the program notes (just use your imagination):

The newest dance theater piece by Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak looks and feels like one of those eerily beautiful, but grey winter days, fitfully seen through whirling snow from the window of a fast moving train. The inspiration for this piece comes from those little glass snow globes that fill with snowflakes every time you shake it.

On stage there are three tiny grey huts into and from which the dancers, clad in black or colored bodysuits, appear and disappear as mysteriously as they emerge from the wings or the ground. Pinto says, "The world inside the shaker is not necessarily happy. It has it all - good, evil, happy and sad." Pollak adds, "We used the imagery of melting ice. The piece starts off in a frozen state, and slowly, the ice breaks. It is somewhere between dark and silly. When the two sides are tied to each other, they fight, make up, and can't be one without the other."

It was just what I needed to see.

And happily, I found these brief clips to share with you: