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Pina: What is your Yearning?

By January 6, 2012March 4th, 2012Blog, Uncategorized

I saw Pina by Wim Wenders last night. If I had been standing up instead of sitting in a plush seat, I might have fallen to the floor during The Rite of Spring. The dancing entered me so completely. It was the sheer (keening, furious, tender) movement in the film that ambushed but if I was to choose the words that stayed with me most they would have to be those of a dancer who asks, “What are we yearning for? Where does all this yearning come from?” I heard an echo of something a Canadian poet once said to me. Referring to her MFA students, she said: “They haven’t found their hunger yet. They’re simply not hungry enough.”

“I’m not interested in how people move; I’m interested in what makes them move.”
– Pina Bausch