Nobody cares
if you can’t dance well.
Just get up and dance.
Great dancers are not great
because of their technique,
they are great because of
their PASSION.
-Martha Graham
I am a strong advocate for dancers developing more internal feedback based on what they feel rather than what they see in the mirror. (In part because a lot of dancers use the mirror as a crutch or enemy, rather than a tool…) It was wonderful to see the same sentiments in print from the master teacher himself (from the New York Times obituary published on August 18, 2013):
““Out of the feeling comes the form…Ninety percent of the time students are taught the form first. And then they’re expected, through some act of God, to get the feeling.”
Mr. Howard’s pedagogy, unorthodox in its day, entailed a kinesthetic approach, in which dancers were taught to rely less on external feedback from the mirror and more on the minute internal signals that telegraph the position of the head, limbs and torso in space.”
“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
mysylph 