April 23, 2021
Spring Update

Last April, as everyone everywhere was struggling to adjust to separation, coping with waves of fear, I received an email from a man in Israel who shared my love of Pina Bausch, found Dear Pina and wanted to do a series of paintings from the images on my website. I jumped at the opportunity, curious as to how my ideas might shift as a result of his paintings. Over the past 12 months, he has sent me photos of the paintings from Dear Pina, and The Quarry Project. It has been exciting to see the melding of aesthetics and settings – the Israeli palette altering the brown Breeding Barn and grey quarry walls. It is a lovely, expansive and continuing collaboration for both of us. You can see more of his work at https://www.michaelkovner.com/gallery

QUICK NEWS of The Quarry Project:
The full ensemble is gathering for this last year, slowly shifting from remote to in-person. While we have been waiting, we have grown in our knowledge of and trust in one another. We will be in the quarry this summer for our last experimenting time, then into the studio for trainings and rehearsals through winter/spring 2022 to prepare for performances in August 2022.

To end this month’s newsletter, I want to offer you a poem by Naomi Shibab Nye. May it be of benefit to you as it has been for me.
Until next month.

Kindness
by Naomi Shibab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

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