If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it
Isadora DuncanRead
It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that creating something seemingly simple, like a single beautiful sentence, requires immense effort and dedication.
Isadora Duncan reflects on the long journey of learning and mastering the craft of writing. She acknowledges that what appears simple on the surface, such as a beautiful sentence, is the result of years of struggle, hard work, and deep understanding, highlighting the intricate relationship between effort and artistry.
In practice
In a writing workshop when discussing the challenges of crafting beautiful prose.
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.
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.
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.
What makes art in general, and literature in particular, remarkable, what distinguishes them from life, is precisely that they abhor repetition. In everyday life, you can tell the same joke thrice and, thrice getting a laugh, become the life of the party. In art, though, this sort of conduct is called 'cliche.'
What has praise and fame to do with poetry? Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? So that all this chatter and praise, and blame and meeting people who admired one and meeting people who did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself- a voice answering a voice.
Jazz music is a language of the emotions.
You may choose your words like a connoisseur, And polish it up with art, But the word that sways, and stirs, and stays, Is the word that comes from the heart.
I think classical ballet dancers dance on pointe because they're simultaneously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies
One must die to life in order to be utterly a creator.
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