Looking, Looking, set to Bartok's Concerto for Viola, is inspired by two, very different experiences: the company's September 2007 tour of Eastern Europe and the deep emotionality and melancholy-infused wit I experienced in the work I saw and the people I met there. Reminders of the past are ever-present—the sophisticated artistic and intellectual achievements manifested in the architecture and the love of the arts contrasted by the horrific devastations of WWII and the bleakness of Communism. And my personal, majestically peaceful experience of walking, in Cambodia, at the Bayon of Angkor Thom, among the enormous, stone heads of the Buddha carved into each side of every tower of the ancient temple. The piece is about the endurance of beauty despite the passage of time and the vicissitudes of history.
