I think that the living and the dead are inseparable from each other.  I think that we feed off of each other.  Somehow I have come to believe that the dead don’t really disappear from life…  Their bodily form may be gone but who they were from the beginning was never that form just as you and I who live now in these bodies are not only these bodies.  Each of us knows in his being that he is eternal.  We never really feel like we are going to die…  This is because we know we are immortal.  The spark of life inside us is a pure drop thrown into the air from the great ocean of eternity, which is nothing but love, constant and unchanging.  Though we exist for a brief moment we are still always and forever also that great sea.

 

And so the dead never really go anywhere.  And likewise the living never really arrive anywhere either.  This I think is at the core of the mystery of art.  Art is regeneration… It is the soul of life constantly renewing itself in ever changing forms and expressions of love and ecstasy.  Dance is this drama played out immediately in real time with nothing but the body and the space it inhabits and the earth upon which it dances.  And this is precisely why we can establish connection with those who have gone before us.  Not only that but furthermore I think it is essential that we do so if we wish to be worthy and become a vehicle for the logos in it’s birth upon the shore of the present.  We build upon each other.  Rodin is alive in my dance.  Pina Bausch lives on in the dances of a thousand choreographers.  Picasso manifests himself daily into multiple hands of genius.  They are all here with us.  Of this I am sure.

Is it possible to move in such a way where there are no lies?  Where every action, every gesture, impulse and kinetic nuance fulfills its cycle from birth to maturity to death and the inevitable transformation into something new?  In this kind of dance there could be no room for doubt, hesitation or lack of conviction.  This dance would express a total harmony between person, nature and ideal…  In short it would express the total fulfillment of one’s destiny (in whatever moment it is danced).  If anything, this is the dance I am seeking.

Should not we artists express the beauty of the world around us, of things greater than ourselves?  To stop at the boundaries of our personal, human drama is like setting out in a great ship rigged and worthy of a trans-oceanic journey and yet stopping at the edge of the harbor, and there sitting smugly thinking we have made a great journey already!  What of the sea?  What of the vast ocean of uncharted beauty?  This is what I want to express!  Something larger than myself!  This idea of modern art that the stories of the personal self are adequate material for great art is highly questionable.  Although I fear I may not have much genius, or even any decent store of talent, I do have a will; A will to set course beyond the harbor of my limitations and express the beauty of the world and its manifold truths.