The first time I started choreographing was in the dark, in my living room, with the lights completely out, to some popular music on the radio. I put the radio on full blast and I started moving. I didn't know what it looked like. I didn't want to see it... I had to start in the dark.
Interpretation
Creativity often begins in the absence of judgment, allowing free expression.
Judith Jamison's quote reflects the transformative nature of art and creativity, emphasizing that the journey of self-expression can commence in a space devoid of constraints or self-criticism. By choreographing in the dark, she highlights the importance of vulnerability and spontaneity in the creative process, suggesting that true artistic exploration often flourishes when one is free from the fear of judgment or visibility.
In practice
In a speech about artistic journeys, one might say, 'Like Judith Jamison, we often need to start in the dark to truly find our voices.'
As a dancer, you really try to stay true to whatever the choreographer/artistic director is giving you. So, now the shoe is on the other foot and I have to trust everyone else - I have to trust the dancer. As I was trusted as a dancer, I trust my dancers.
It's never too early to teach your children about the tool of money. Teach them how to work for it and they learn pride and self-respect. Teach them how to save it and they learn security and self-worth. Teach them how to be generous with it and they learn love.
We can go on talking about racism and who treated whom badly, but what are you going to do about it? Are you going to wallow in that or are you going to create your own agenda?
I've always felt that complement of opposites: body and soul, solitude and companionship, and in the dance studio, contraction and release, rise and fall.
You wake up white, and you think about certain things every day. You wake up black, and you think about certain things. You wake up Chinese, and you think certain things - but those things aren't major. What's major is that you are good at your craft.
You don't enter a dance studio and say "I can't do that." If you do, then why are you in the studio in the first place?
A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!
The artist beholds in nature more than she herself Nature is conscious of.
That is one thing I am sure of amid my many uncertainties regarding the literary vocation: deep inside, a writer feels that writing is the best thing that ever happened to him, or could ever happen to him, because as far as he is concerned, writing is the best possible way of life, never mind the social, political, or financial rewards of what he might achieve through it.
Making movies is both entirely ludicrous and incredibly hard. It's a preposterous way to spend your time. You give up a lot for the privilege of doing it, and one of the things you get are relationships of immense trust that you see forged in situations of immense stress.
I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.
I dreamed of having a book of my own, of writing one that I could put on a shelf.
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