Dancing…

“Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made.”

– Ted Shawn

Many, many years ago, I studied dance for a while, mostly ballet. I spent some time sleeping on the floor in friend’s of friend’s apartments in NY, with just enough money for daily lessons at NYC Ballet school or the ABT. My favorite day was Wednesday, when I could get into the museums for free. Waiting for me back home was a job as a computer programmer that I wasn’t at all interested in.

It turns out I wasn’t very good as a dancer, but I loved the controlled grace and power of dance and, even after I put an end to my own efforts, I continued to attend dance concerts when possible. Now, years later and in a very different stage of my artistic “career” I still find the human figure in motion a rich subject of inquiry. Occasionally I go to a figure drawing class, but the absence of movement always seems like a missing dimension – of course, that probably speaks more to the lack of my drawing skills as I’ve seen many drawings of figures that seem to move in spite of the static pose!