Thank you, Peggy. There are two moments in her Arabian that are as graceful as the rest, but additionally they are downright "cute"! It sounds funny to say that. But watch her actually stepping out of the urn, and later stepping back in again. Grace personified, yes, but maybe because these are the only moments when some definite activity must be achieved, beyond the pure aesthetic dance form, there is this teensy little extra subtlety in those movements. Perhaps we feel her brain focus on the necessity of those steps.
There was an entire book written, and a very good one, quite scientific, about the way we think and process certain pieces of knowledge. I think it was called The Barmaid's Brain (or something like that) because it included the way a waitress will continually bring orders to myriad people, every order different, and she will keep somewhere in her mind all the details of those orders. When the place is very busy, and the waitress is very good, where is that information stored in the brain? It is not stored where our knowledge of grammar, or our knowledge of continents and countries, is stored.
When a ballerina—any dancer—performs an intricate, sustained dance on stage, she is not thinking: "Now I must do this movement." She is executing every motion from some more spiritual connection with the dance, so her brain is alive and aware, but her motions come from a knowledge within her arms, her legs, her entire psyche. She is in tune with something we don't understand—but we certainly feel it. One of my favourite ballerinas described to me how she connected to a vertical, invisible shaft of energy, which came down from the heavens and went into the earth beneath her feet; the vertical line passed through the crown of her head and through the soles of her feet and it carried her, she said, in every move. She felt that gravity was not the same within that shaft of energy. Actually she taught me to feel some of that connection, so that in walking down the sidewalk, maybe carrying groceries, I have never been quite the same since. Well, I'm sure every dancer has a very good idea of what I'm talking about.
So, returning to our beautiful cobra, this ethereal creature slithers within this sublime energy, and her entire dance is a celebration of that connection with the cosmos or physics or God, or whatever words we use but which fail to say what we sense in watching her. This is the pure art form. The teensy, teensy smile within that grace is in her two seconds of actually having to execute the step-overs to exit and enter her urn. There are two milliseconds when we, the humble, mortal audience, can share some fractal of what must be in her mind—just a glimpse—because, unlike the rest of the dance, these two movements are necessary. They are the stems on the roses.
Okay, I'm totally off topic, and I've said nothing new. My apologies. Anybody else know her birthday? Thanks again, Peggy.