Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.

Dance in the body you have.

Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.

I learned three important things in college-to use a library, to memorize quickly and visually, to drop asleep at any time given a horizontal surface and fifteen minutes. What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule.

Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.

But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises. In the same way the lifted leg of an arabesque becomes a wing, and not a mechanical leverage like a raised trap door. This is the precise difference between dancing and acrobatics. The dancer tries to express something; the acrobat merely pulls, raises, stretches and grinds. The acrobat is lost in a web of muscles the dancer is all but invisible in projected idea.

Dancers aren't made of their technique, but their passion.