The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
Interpretation
The essence of a culture is reflected through its artistic expressions like dance and music.
Agnes De Mille's quote emphasizes that the authentic and deepest expressions of a community are showcased through their dances and music. These art forms transcend words, revealing emotions, stories, and truths that may not be easily articulated, highlighting the sincerity of human experience and connection.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of cultural heritage, one might say, 'As Agnes De Mille once said, 'The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music.'
Ours is an upbeat, a hurried, hasty beat. It keeps pressing us to go farther, to include everything so that we can savor everything, so that we can know everything, so that we will miss nothing. Partly it's greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.
No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible
To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.
We can't stand silence, because silence induces thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
I can't think of a single one of my plays that does not represent a coincidence between an external and an internal event. Something outside of me, outside even my own life, something I read in a newspaper or witness on the street, something I see or hear, fascinates me. I see it for its dramatic potential.
A typewriter is a means of transcribing thought, not expressing it.
The power of art is that it can connect us to one another, and to larger truths about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human.
Artists are meant to be madmen, to disturb and shock us.
And when they encounter works of art which show that using new media can lead to new experiences and to new consciousness, and expand our senses, our perception, our intelligence, our sensibility, then they will become interested in this music.
Burmese authors and artists can play the role that artists everywhere play. They help to mold the outlook of a society - not the whole outlook, and they are not the only ones to mold the outlook of society, but they have an important role to play there.
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