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.
My sense of style is influenced by how I feel. I want to express myself because they see you before they hear you. You want to come on stage, and what you look like should represent the song you are playing or the set you are about to play or the message in your music.
I just think music is so intrinsically linked with images in the culture that we live in that you'll be hard-pressed to have an experience with the music without a preconceived notion.
The human soul needs actual beauty even more than bread.
Animation is about creating the illusion of life. And you can't create it if you don't have one.
I want work that, possessing as thin a membrane as possible between life and art, foregrounds the question of how the writer solves being alive.
If all your life means to you is water running over rocks, then photograph it, but I want to create something that would not have existed without me.
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