Dana Tai Soon Burgess Quotes

As a child I always loved traditional Korean masked dances. There is something magical about a mask because we all wear or hide behind a metaphoric mask, and ultimately underneath this metaphor is our true vulnerable core. I think we all want to reveal ourselves but can only do so when we feel we are safe.

I don't understand choreographers who say they don't care about the audience or that they would be happy to present their works non-publicly. I think dance is a form of communication and the goal is to dialogue with the audience. If an audience member tells me they cried or that the dance moved them to think about their own journey or a family member's, then the work is successful.

A young choreographer often gets hung up on thinking they have to have all the answers. As a choreographer ages, they realize that they're more of a steward to movement. We mold movement and curate and form it into plausible and understandable stories.

A dance feels finished to me when I suddenly see this moment in the movement that feels like closure and makes me want to cry. And then I'll realize, "Oh, that's the end. This whole thing is working because it all led up to this moment." It pulls all this together and it sends the correct message in a very poetic way.

All people share the same desire to be treated equally. We all go through similar emotional journeys from love to hate, rejection to acceptance. I think the most important thing for dance right now is to allow for more empathy and understanding between people of different races and socioeconomic statuses. In our society we need to build bridges.

From person's movement patterns I can tell a lot of things: if pain is in the body, whether someone is depressed, what age they are. When you see someone whose chest is withdrawn, their deltoids are rolled forward. That's someone whose history has broken them, in a sense. You can recognize that movement of pulling away and protecting the heart across all cultures.

I think one of the biggest limitations for an artist is not being able to dream a golden dream. We're always saying, "Oh, we can make do with this," or "We can problem-solve this." But John Neumeier's creative process was very different from piecemealing. It was the first time I understood I could build something larger and that it could be and should be supported.