Perhaps it is because the extremes of McGregor's language – its startling dislocations and eerie fluency – have become secondnature to the dancers.
It answers these questions particularly convincingly because of its most startling characteristic - the mitochondrial genome of the tulip tree (and those of its relatives, the magnolias) contain the most slowly evolving genes ever studied.
They would cry because of his startling resemblance to a distant relative among the dead, his great-uncle Shmiel Jäger, a meat shipper in Bolechow who was murdered by the Nazis along with his wife, Ester, and their four daughters.
The report by Mr. Giuliani was startling, not only because of its size -- the mayor has already raised more money than Charles E. Schumer collected for his entire Senate contest in 1998 -- but also because the figures appeared to undercut what had once been a widespread assumption of the contest: that Mrs. Clinton would raise more money than Mr. Giuliani.
That last one is startling in part because of its speaker: Newt Gingrich.
The Schoenberg quartet -- still a startling item in quartet programs, not only because of its slide into atonality but also because it invokes a soprano to sing through its second half -- was rather straightforward in a context of radical music.
But it rolls because of its shape.
Mel Gussow of The New York Times described it as "an outrageous, lunatic comedy," but a difficult one to stage because of its eclectic style and an onrush of short scenes, characters and startling entrances.
Australia is notorious in Britain for its startling variety of causes of death, thanks to its violent wildlife and the dangerous heat of its empty desert roads.
