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.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how identity influences our daily thoughts, while emphasizing the importance of excellence in one's work over racial or cultural identity.
Judith Jamison's quote points out the inherent differences in how individuals from various backgrounds may perceive the world and their place in it. It suggests that while identity and race can shape daily thoughts and experiences, the true essence of a person lies in their skills and dedication to their craft. The quote encourages the recognition of one's own talents and contributions regardless of their background, reinforcing the idea that personal excellence transcends cultural or racial contexts.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech to emphasize the importance of skills over identity.
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 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?
Maybe it's a generational thing, but I never wanted to be the best black dancer in the world. I just wanted to be the best.
Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.
We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling.
For you know only a heap of broken images
After all, the only thing that is going to save mankind is if enough people live their lives for something or someone other than themselves.
Space. The continual becoming: invisible fountain from which all rhythms flow and to which they must pass. Beyond time or infinity
Dissents are appeals to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of another day.
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