Pina - (Immediately) Before and After (typed on my phone)

Before
I don't know if it is Peenya or Pinuh or Peena, I am going to see it because it is showing at a theater that only shows movies worth seeing. I don't know much about the choreographer that the film is a tribute to, I think she is German? I am happy to admit that I enjoy dancing, both taking part in and the watching of. I do not dance well enough, well I suck at dancing, but I don't do it well enough to know how to appreciate professional dancing. I deal with professional dance performances much how I do classical music. I sit back and let it happen. I enjoy going to both. Most of all, I like watching dance with someone that does appreciate watching dancers as much as I appreciate the performance of professional athletes; the two are not unrelated. If you asked me if I had reservations about seeing this two hour dance film I would reply with a simple no. Reserved my 'no' may come-off but don't take my lack of emphasis to mean  reservations. I only say no with heft when I am asked if I want to go to Wal-Mart.  To be most honest, I am kind of jacked about going to see something that will hopefully push me a bit. And even more honestly, I am most stoked about talking to my friend Chiara about this movie. She makes it cool for me to want to talk about how athletic and awesome dancers really are. We used to talk about dancing and we wouldn't even have to talk our way around the high-brow part of it all. We dismissed all the exuberant pomp of a London dance audience by first buying student tickets and second by getting straight to the meat--our shared response to a professional's dedication. 

I am also going to see it because the trailer reminds me of this crazy Chinese show that I saw in Hong Kong. It was a music, dance, light, architecture, performance thing. It was called 'The Life and Times of Louis Kahn'. The stage would lift and tumble and then Louis Kahn would talk about how once light hits a room then it belongs to that room. What a wild thought that is? Light belonging to a room. Almost as absurd as land and water and air belonging to one or a thing. At any rate, that performance was something other. More movies should go after an other. I think we would do well to usher some other into our lives that are often predictably similar. Walking in the theatre now, probably should have worn contacts today, stock 3-D goggles don't fit well over my glasses, I'll persevere.

After
"Move when there is nothing left to say." "Dance, Dance. Or you'll die." Pina (Peena) is a motion picture made in remembrance of and in dedication to an obsessor of movement, the novel and brave choreographer, Pina. So often we are moving. Pina asks, "towards what are we moving?" Only towards death, maybe? The person and the movie begs us to move with purpose and to experience an-other's movement for life's sake. We are at once joyful and lonely in our sentience. Words are sufficient for evoking some-thing but our folly is thinking that words are enough. She instructs her dancers to respond and search for an expression of the longing, the yearning that is within all of us. To her dancers it is of no matter where the need to purge comes from. The parascientific explanation falls on deaf ears in the Tanztheater. Pina's movement and troupe is in pursuit, a pursuit for the ultimate mystery--us. 


If you have ever sat in a movie theater and tilted your head and leaned forward as if a little extra effort on your part will assuage the discomfort you feel when the pictures on the screen aren't enough, then this movie will edify your curiosity. The camera moves in this one and in some cases, as adeptly as the dancers. I am not a choreographer, I know nothing of choreography. I do understand that the audience's vantage point is key in the design of a production. The camera in this sense, adds a third dimension. We are permitted to see each movement from more than one perspective. We usually fix ourselves in immovable seats that are situated according to efficiency as it concerns ticket sales. Imagine if we were able to get up out of our velvet seats, move about, and wander around the stage with the dancers at arm's length, maybe even touch them. Pina invites us on stage though it is not a proscenium stage. Often in this movie the stage is a space we would normally walk right by, except here, there are dancers on the corner next to the bus stop. Pina infuses the ordinary with extraordinary movement. Her dances are about engaging our surrounding, both the physical and the un-physical with all parts of our self, wringing every last drop of creativity out of the dancer. 


I was reminded of something I read from Jay-Z. He was quoted in an education journal, he was talking about sonnets, he said, "They confined themselves with these rules and therefore were forced to crawl around on their hands and knees in the alcoves of our imagination in order to conjure up an expression for what they felt. It was only a feeling until they forced themselves to give it language. Imposed parameters bore self discovery that proved to be revolutionary and timeless. I mean we are still reading that shit, like 500 years later." 


Pina, literally gets down on hands and knees and takes us with her. So often movies are ordinary. This one is something other and other is good for us.