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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the balance and interplay between contrasting elements in life and art.
Judith Jamison's quote reflects the intrinsic relationship between opposing forces, such as the physicality of the body and the spirituality of the soul, as well as the solitude found in dance contrasted with the shared experience of companionship. This duality is pivotal in various aspects of life, particularly in the expressive realm of dance, where the combination of contraction and release, rise and fall illustrates the deeper emotional and physical experiences that enrich both performance and personal growth.
In practice
This quote can be used to inspire a dance class on the importance of balance in movement.
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?
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?
Maybe it's a generational thing, but I never wanted to be the best black dancer in the world. I just wanted to be the best.
Music is something that takes you to a world which is very different from the world of hatred,jealousy, and all those negative emotions
Cinema and the arts invite viewers to focus on a story and, in doing so, peel away its layers and peer into the depths of the human soul.
The groove is so mysterious. We're born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away. I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all.
The reason I play music is to touch people - for selfish reasons, as well. It feels good to make someone else feel something, whether it's a kiss, a painting, good idea or it's a song.
Can a film really change anything? I mean, what was the last time? Maybe the Italian neo-realists, where they became the voice and the heart and the soul of Italy, a nation that had been destroyed. I don't know.
I think that literature is something that embraces a much larger experience than politics. It's an expression of what is life, of what are all the dimensions of life. But politics is one among others.
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