The bodies of dancers with their kind of devotion are dual. And this is visible whatever they are doing. A kind of Uncertainty Principle determines them; instead of being alternately particle and wave, their bodies are alternately giver and gift.

They know their own bodies in such a penetrating way that they can be within them or before them and beyond them. And this alternates, sometimes changing every few seconds, sometimes every few minutes.

The duality of each body is what allows them, when they perform, to merge into a single entity. They lean against, lift, carry, roll over, separate from, conjoin, buttress each other so that two or three bodies become a single dwelling, like a living cell is a dwelling for its molecules and messengers, or a forest for its animals.

The same duality explains why they are as much intrigued by falling as by leaping, and why the ground challenges them as much as the air.

John Berger, “The Company of Drawings”