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Beauty isn’t found or experienced as a still thing. It’s moving. People say when they see something beautiful, something profound, that they are moved. Beauty moves, it breathes, it takes you away from your local awareness. It’s an interaction. Un-stagnant. Something that carries you along down this unexpected and graceful pathway. Like it’s holding your hand and you just sort of follow it not knowing where it will lead. That means it’s alive, animate: with life.

I don’t ever want art to be breathless. That’s why it’s our responsibility as artists, no matter what genre, to not settle. Jeka got me thinking about settling versus pushing and how sometimes we can get complacent. In my opinion, especially after we see successes. But we can’t let ourselves. Pushing the bounds within ourselves, within our own spheres of work is only going to help the community evolve as a whole.

A poet, Alice Notley said, ”To be black geese to be strenuous dancers is not to dignify a passion but to grip it” (from When Spring Comes). Over the years I’ve returned to that passage time and time again. Maybe it’s the imagery, I just feel like it’s grabbing my shoulders and shaking me awake. I see that when I watch students learning, when I see my teammates pushing through rehearsals, people in class. Strenuous dancers. And it’s beautiful. It moves me. Thank you God for art. For the things, not just in dance, the things everywhere that take my hand, that grip me, and carry me into their intangible beauty. May I never let go of the ability to be lost in that. May I not let myself grow complacent or fall out of love with the possibilities that flourish, within the best parts of imagination.

It’s late. Good day today. So grateful. Tomorrow holds even more. Night night :)

Heart,
Mari dancers use muscle memory to remember the dances they learn. in practice, we learn and run it over and over and over again until the body just remembers. the difference between you and i... i don't know how many times i've had to explain this... i hate taking breaks when i know i have things to do. but i guess you can't really call it a break for those who don't even want it :( i feel like this sickness is going to slow me down this week. i just hope i feel better by the end of it so i'll be alive for competition... this weak immune system of mine puts me to shame! it's all i think about, all i talk about and all i do. and at the end of the day, regardless of any stress i may have faced...
my biggest inspiration and influence? everyone.