Lady Aster dances

Aster - click on image to enlarge it

I saw a dancer in the center of this aster - can you see her, too? It brought to mind some dancers and what they have said about their art. Here are a few:

I am absorbed in the magic of movement and light. Movement never lies. It is the magic of what I call the outer space of the imagination. There is a great deal of outer space, distant from our daily lives, where I feel our imagination wanders sometimes. It will find a planet or it will not find a planet, and that is what a dancer does.

My dancing is just dancing. It is not an attempt to interpret life in a literary sense. It is the affirmation of life through movement. Its only aim is to impart the sensation of living, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, of the mystery, the humor, the variety and the wonder of life; to send the spectator away with a fuller sense of his own potentialities and the power of realizing them, whatever the medium of his activity.

~Martha Graham~

To dance is to be yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful.
This is power on earth and it is yours for the taking.

~Agnes DeMille~


Dance is the movement of the universe concentrated in an individual.

You were once wild here. Don't let them tame you.

Let us first teach little children to breathe, to vibrate, to feel, and to become one with the general harmony and movement of nature. Let us first produce a beautiful human being, a dancing child.

~Isadora Duncan~


Each art tells of this mystery with its own signs. Music speaks through symbols we hear; dance speaks to the eye. So the two sisters— one having no voice— can both speak at once, each telling us of their mysterious mother.

~Vivian Fine~


Stop talking, start dancing. Soon you will know what you need to know.

~Anon~


The Gypsy Dancer appears to be free from the societal constraints. The Gypsy as the Wild Woman archetype has magical powers, powers which make her dangerous. She is out-of-control, or at least beyond the control of the patriarchy. She evokes fear, especially in the subconscious where the Wild Woman lurks within us all. We are afraid to let her out because we may lose control.

~Laurel Victoria Gray~


Beside the fire, as the wood burns black,
A laughing dancer in veils of light,
Whose dance transforms the darkness to gold.

~Abu Abd Allah ben Abi-l-Khisal
Excerpt from The Serpent of the Nile by Buonaventura~


If you stumble, make it part of the dance ...

~Author Unknown~