The first time I started choreographing was in the dark, in my living room, with the lights completely out, to some popular music on the radio. I put the radio on full blast and I started moving. I didn't know what it looked like. I didn't want to see it... I had to start in the dark.
Interpretation
Creativity often begins in the absence of judgment, allowing free expression.
Judith Jamison's quote reflects the transformative nature of art and creativity, emphasizing that the journey of self-expression can commence in a space devoid of constraints or self-criticism. By choreographing in the dark, she highlights the importance of vulnerability and spontaneity in the creative process, suggesting that true artistic exploration often flourishes when one is free from the fear of judgment or visibility.
In practice
In a speech about artistic journeys, one might say, 'Like Judith Jamison, we often need to start in the dark to truly find our voices.'
As a dancer, you really try to stay true to whatever the choreographer/artistic director is giving you. So, now the shoe is on the other foot and I have to trust everyone else - I have to trust the dancer. As I was trusted as a dancer, I trust my dancers.
It's never too early to teach your children about the tool of money. Teach them how to work for it and they learn pride and self-respect. Teach them how to save it and they learn security and self-worth. Teach them how to be generous with it and they learn love.
We can go on talking about racism and who treated whom badly, but what are you going to do about it? Are you going to wallow in that or are you going to create your own agenda?
I've always felt that complement of opposites: body and soul, solitude and companionship, and in the dance studio, contraction and release, rise and fall.
You wake up white, and you think about certain things every day. You wake up black, and you think about certain things. You wake up Chinese, and you think certain things - but those things aren't major. What's major is that you are good at your craft.
You don't enter a dance studio and say "I can't do that." If you do, then why are you in the studio in the first place?
You are both a work of art and an artist at work.
I wasn't a fashion editor. I was the one and only fashion editor.
When the color achieves richness, the form attains its fullness also.
What is really beautiful must always be true.
The art has to make it on its own, without explanations, and it’s the same for poetry. If the poem or the painting has to be explained, then it’s a failure in communication.
Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.
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