Yes...that's what I'm talking about

via Orlando & Ivy

I saw Pina Bausch's work live exactly once.

I count myself lucky that I was able to see Ten Chi when it came to Berkeley. It has to be one of the top ten theatrical experiences of the past decade for me (seeing Robert Wilson is #1 and I will write it about one day if I can stand it).

Sometimes how you arrive a the theater can make all the difference in your receptivity. In the case of Ten Chi, I got lost in Oakland. Maybe when Ms. Stein referred to the there that was there or not , she was talking about the fog. Driving down the streets, it can look like nothing is ahead of you. No recognizable landmarks or streets. It was foggy so street signs were difficult to read. I kept driving and was grateful to finally find familiar ground, to park the car and walk up to the Zellerbach and find my friend.

We sat up in the mezzanine. In the front. We had to look over a thick wall and maybe some speakers, but still good seats. I liked sitting next to my friend and watching him watch. I liked that he was tall and I could see him out of the corner of my eye and that his arm was soft and solid and kept me anchored while I watched. It was like another world. Another there. I remember the sculptural quality of the dancers. The enormous scale of the whales. The snow that fell for over an hour. It fell for so long that I started to get disoriented and how the theater and the stage started to swirl and breathe through the wall of white.

Yes.

Pina understood duration.

She understood that when something stopped being entertaining that there's something underneath the surface still to be revealed. There can be rigor in the mess. That maybe some of us get satisfaction from experiences that extend beyond enjoyment and delight. That there's something about pressing on the raw nerve - stripping it bare - that reveals something essential about us and about life. That repulsion, aversion, boredom are inescapable. That those feelings are extensions of love, desire, and engagement. They're what lie on the other side of the wall we keep slamming ourselves into. They are necessary.