Once upon a time I wrote a novel. It was meant to be an allegorical novel for adults but it was not perceived that way. I was upset it didn't get published but even today it remains one of most important pieces of work I have ever produced and I still fundamentally believe in it. The catalyst for the story is a scene between a disillusioned and restless young man and free spirited dancer who is not as free as she appears to be.
"Tell me, why do you dance?” he said once he had caught up with her.
“All life is a dance,” she said smiling in the warm night air. “The children at play; these waves hitting the sand; women laughing as they walk back from market. A bird; it dances through the sky. Everything is movement, movements flowing over and through the world. It is one of the highest endeavours, as high even as dreaming."
She spoke and started to move, slowly now, gracefully, as if each word had a corresponding action: a dip, a bend, a turn, never moving more than a few feet away from him.
“It has form and movement,” she continued. “But it is also still and formless," she stopped and the air paused around her. Her finger traced a line around her face and she looked at him as if he had said something, which he had not.
She suddenly plopped down onto the sand next to him. "You can paint dancers too, and when you add voice and music, you bring all the arts together,” she said. “It transforms the human body into art, but it is so fleeting, just like this moment here with you. It exists like life and death, linking us to the lifecycle. It is control. Poise. Grace, and yet it’s also chaos. It’s the universe itself.”
Let's not pretend I can dance. Or that I am fit enough to keep a dance going for long, but I do admire people who can dance well.
And then there is this other level, this attempt at perfection, that is like an act of love. Watching a ballerina is not only a manifesto for how we should love and live but also an illustration of how we so rarely manage to achieve it.
To photograph this experience is a visceral thing and one cannot approach the performance as if it is any other event. Certain musicians, too, demand the same adherence to this code - it is intimate, responsive, and deeply obligatory: to fail with the image is a betrayal.
The Ballet of Manila is not from Moscow, London or Paris but there were dancers on that stage what demanded this recognition of their work.
"Everything is movement, movements flowing over and through the world...
... it is one of the highest endeavours, as high even as dreaming."
I'm obsessed. If your'e interested, read this.