Copyrighted © by James Penha. All rights reserved.

an unusual mind
the kind that sees patterns
in falling snow

Art by Kozhukhova / shutterstock.com

Words found by James Penha in Jennifer Homans’
New Yorker profile of choreographer Justin Peck.

Publisher’s Note:

An excerpt from the profile by Jennifer Homans, “Justin Peck Finds His Feet” (New York City Ballet’s young resident choreographer has struggled to make good on his early promise, until now), from The New Yorker Magazine (20 February 2023):

“Peck’s great skill has always been his facility at moving large numbers of people around a stage, and in this piece, with a cast of thirty, he outdoes himself. He mostly stays away from set patterns or straight lines, so that his dancers seem, like birds, to fly in and out of formations, following instinctive paths rather than any obvious logic. This requires an unusual mind, the kind that sees patterns in falling snow. He also likes clumps of bodies stuck together, which then unwind and scatter....”

Source (link retrieved on 23 December 2023):
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/27/ballet-review-copland-dance-episodes-justin-peck

James Penha

Expat New Yorker James Penha (he/him🌈) has lived for the past three decades in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his work is widely published in journals and anthologies. His newest chapbook of poems, American Daguerreotypes, is available for Kindle. Penha edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry.