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it might be performed in half that time. The beauty of the pacing is that the architectures seem to extend just beyond themselves before evolving into unpredicted forms. It’s as if Poland threatens to pull apart at its borders, but then collapses back at the last possible moment into an exquisite contortion of its former self. Despite my misgivings about Poland ’s elasticity and the unorthodox use of the precursor as accompaniment, there is no doubt that Kepler is a technically masterful troupe and that the creator of Poland, a young hand Artistic Director West refuses to name to the press, is talented. The precursor, strung throughout the piece as it is—Kepler’s trademark—is astonishingly subtle and seems at home inside the low architectural wind. Because of its lack of dynamics, at least in terms of speed, West must have felt it necessary to use the more resonant traditional instruments. However, their effect is haunting in a way that he could not have anticipated. Poland has a voice like black smoke, could it withdraw itself from the lungs of birds, could it return itself to the stack. My initial questions about its less-conventional elements are moot. I joined the audience in Lvov in giving Kepler a silent ovation—sleight’s highest praise, and one rarely proffered in Eastern Europe.

    When they first arrived in London, the last stop on the sold-out three-week tour, West immediately sent Byrne out to talk with two hands, a matched set who roomed together in Oxford. He arranged for them to meet Byrne at the train station and take him to a pub for mild illumination. West, thrilled with Byrne’s first success—knowing, as the audience could not, that it was his precursor that had made the sleight—knew also that Kepler wouldn’t be able to continue working with the incompletes. Besides, West wanted Byrne to find a partner. Neither of these two would be it, West knew, but Byrne had never met a hand. They took practice.
BYRNE: So, you two draw?
HAND 1: The boy is stunning.
HAND 2: I draw. He wanks.
HAND 1: Shut it, Leo.
BYRNE: I’m curious, when you sit down to do it—what do you think about?
HAND 1: Nothing. The mind must be cleared of refuse.
HAND 2: Easy for you since your mind is a void.
HAND 1: Come off it. My structures are just as complex as yours.
HAND 2: But they aren’t well-reasoned, and they have no arc. Now—for weeks, months, before I sit down to actually draw, I’ve been making notes, thinking through transitions. My sleights have balance and composition. They’re coherent.
HAND 1: No, they’re not. Coherence comes from a moral center. I research. I read, I watch as much film, I’m at the microscope and the telescope and the needles as often as you are. I work in the garden and I’m better in the kitchen, particularly with Indian. But then, when it’s time to draw, I empty my mind. That is how one gets to a sleight. Yours are overdetermined, artificial. Yours are clever.
HAND 2: I’d rather they were clever than totally fragmented. You’re self-indulgent and melodramatic, and so is your work.
BYRNE: I’ve never heard a sleight called melodramatic before. Wouldn’t there have to be emotional content for that?
HAND 2: The audience can’t see emotion because they watch the sleightists for it. And if the performers aren’t well-trained enough to suppress their own, then one can’t get underneath the thing, can one? The emotion lives in the structure. Clearly you don’t understand the structure. Hardly any of the audience does—they aren’t meant to—but what they do understand is intensity. They understand presence.
BYRNE: Isn’t sleight about absence?
HAND 2: Oh, child.
HAND 1: Leo, there is no need for condescension—although that at least you’re good at. And you aren’t being accurate. It isn’t emotion that’s present. Sleight accesses something beyond both emotion and reason, which is why yours always fail. And don’t abuse our guest, even the