If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it
Isadora DuncanRead
Oh Woman, come before us, before our eyes longing for beauty, and tired of the ugliness of civilization, come in simple tunics, letting us see the line and harmony of the body beneath, and dance for us. Dance us the sweetness of life. Give us again the sweetness and the beauty of the true dance, give us again the joy of seeing the simple unconscious pure body of a woman. Like a great call it has come, and women must hear it and answer it.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a call for women to embrace and showcase their natural beauty through dance, amidst the harshness of civilization.
Isadora Duncan's quote highlights the profound connection between the beauty of the female form and the art of dance. She urges women to step forward and celebrate their innate elegance and grace, suggesting that this expression of beauty can provide a counterbalance to the ugliness of modern life. In this way, dance becomes a powerful medium for rediscovering joy and simplicity in existence.
In practice
This quote could be used at a women's empowerment event to inspire women to embrace their beauty.
If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it
The dancer of the future will be one whose body & soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of the soul will have become the movement of the body.
A dancer, if she is great, can give to the people something that they can carry with them forever. They can never forget it, and it has changed them, though they may never know it.
Master technique, so that technique NEVER prevents you from dancing.
I have only danced my life. As a child I danced the spontaneous joy of growing things. As an adolescent, I danced with joy turning to apprehension of the first realisation of tragic undercurrents; apprehension of the pitiless brutality and crushing progress of life.
There are likewise three kinds of dancers: first, those who consider dancing as a sort of gymnastic drill, made up of impersonal and graceful arabesques; second, those who, by concentrating their minds, lead the body into the rhythm of a desired emotion, expressing a remembered feeling or experience. And finally, there are those who convert the body into a luminous fluidity, surrendering it to the inspiration of the soul.
Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice.
A work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the subject it may represent.
The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world.
The dimensions of a work of art are seldom realized by the author until the work is accomplished. It is like a flowering dream. Ideas grow, budding silently, and there are a thousand illuminations coming day by day as the work progresses. A seed grows in writing as in nature. The seed of the idea is developed by both labor and the unconscious, and the struggle that goes on between them.
I was honoured when they asked me to appear at the president's birthday rally in Madison Square Garden. There was like a hush over the whole place when I came on to sing 'Happy Birthday,' like if I had been wearing a slip, I would have thought it was showing or something. I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, what if no sound comes out!'
The song is ended, but the melody lingers on.
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