Dance communicates in a way that no other art form can… It has a unique ability to reach people viscerally, energetically and poetically, in a way that is both primitive and sophisticated.

In a wonderful conversation with The Guardian, Antonia Grove, artistic director of the Grove Theater Company, echoes Hellen Keller’s moving exclamation upon experiencing dance for the first time and finding it to be “like the mind.” (via explore-blog)

lesbianelsas:

This is Harry. As a boy Harry was very, very shy.

Some people might have even said that he was painfully shy. As if his shyness caused them pain, and not the other way around. There are many things that can cause a person to recede, to look away from other people’s eyes, or to choose empty hallways over crowded ones. Some shy people try to reach out, and try, and nothing seems to come back. And then there’s just a point where they stop trying.

In Harry’s case, he was slapped in the face and called names designed to isolate him, designed to deliver maximum damage. This because he’d come from another country, and didn’t know the right words to use, or the right way to say them. And so, Harry learned to be still. To camouflage, to be the least.

Some people describe this as receding into a shell, where the stillness hardens and protects. But the eyes, even when they look down and away, are still watching, still looking for some way out, or in. Painfully shy.

Then, in middle school, Harry found theater, where he forced himself to speak through other people’s words. And then dance, where he started to speak through the movements of his body. To be so still for so long when you’re young means a lot of pent-up energy, and it was released there, through work, endless work.

If someone carves into a sampling with a knife, the injury is as wide as the entire trunk. Though that mark will never fully heal, even grow the tree around it, and as you grow, the scar gets smaller in proportion.

If you, right now, are in a shell, you should know that you’re not alone. That there are many, many other people like you, and that there’s nothing wrong with you. It might even be necessary right now, it might keep you safe for a time. But after the danger is gone, after it has exhausted its use, you’ll find a way out.

You may need help, you might need to work pretty hard. You may need to find some ways to laugh at yourself. Or find a passion or friend. But you will find it. And when you do, it will be so good to see you.

This is Harry. As a boy, Harry was very, very shy.

If you are in a shell… (video)
| narrated by ze frank
| choreography and performance by Harry Shum Jr.

fmh13:

What if God Got Bored? 

“I wonder, I wonder, what you would do if you had the power to dream at night any dream you wanted to dream and you would of course be able to alter your time sense, and slip, say 75 years of subjective time into 8 hours of sleep.

You would, I suppose, start out by fulfilling all your wishes. You could design for yourself what would be the most ecstatic life – love affairs, banquets, dancing girls, wonderful journeys, gardens, music beyond belief. And then after a couple of months of this sort of thing, 75 years a night, you’d be getting a little taste for something different, and you would move over to an adventurous dimension, where there was sudden dangers involved, and the thrill of dealing with dangers, and you could rescue princesses from dragons, and go on dangerous journeys, make wonderful explosions and blow them up. Eventually get into contest with enemies. And after you’ve done that for some time, you’d think up a new wrinkle. To forget that you were dreaming, so you’d think it was all for real, and to be anxious about it. Because it’d be so great when you woke up, and they you’d say, well, like children who dare each other on things, how far out could you get? What could you take? What dimension of being lost, of abandonment of your power, what dimension of that could you stand? You could ask yourself this ‘cos you know you’d eventually wake up.

And after you’re gone on doing this, you see, for some time, you’d suddenly find yourself sitting around in this room, with all your personal involvements, problems, etc, talking with me. How do you know that’s not what you’re doing? Could be, because after all, what would you do if you were god? If you were, what there is, the self, and do you punish us – The basic text of Hinduism, one of them starts out saying in the beginning was the self, and looking around it said, I am. And thus it is that everyone to this day, when asked who is there, says that it is I.

If you were god, and in this sense that you knew everything, you would be bored. Because, if looking at it from another way, we push technology to its furthest possible development, and we had instead of a dial telephone on one’s desk, a more complicated system of buttons, and one touch would give you anything you wanted, Aladdin’s lamp, you would eventually have to add a button labelled surprise, because all perfectly know futures are past. They have happened, virtually. It is only the true future that is a surprise. So if you were god, you would say to yourself – man, get lost.” ~Alan Watts…

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)