Dancer

Please send me your last pair of shoes, worn out with dancing...so that I might have something to press against my heart. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I have many artistic loves.

The aroma of freshly pressed parchment and the crackle of a quill against the page...

...the feeling of guitar strings against my fingertips, waxy and smooth, just awaiting a melody...

...the scent of stage-black and new-hung curtains, the echo of my voice as it carries across the plush seats and expansive house.

But to capture emotion when words fail, there is only one form of majestic art that will suffice.

Dancing.

There is so much incredible emotion wrapped up in the stomping of feet, the weaving of bodies, and the swaying of hips.

These simple movements have incredible power.

Sometimes, dancing is all you can do.

So much can be expressed in the strong movements of the salsa, the raw passion of the tango, the romantic intoxication of the waltz.

Emotions can pour out through movement.

Whether it's just the need to leap with joy -- overcome with the delight of some precious bit of news...captured up in the sheer delight of the King...

...the intense ache that causes one to crumple down to the ground or arch a leg in some mournful movements at a sudden heartbreak or the loss of a dearest love...

...or the need to express. The need to be. The need to exist as art, as passion, as light.

It's at those moments when the feeling, the expression is pressing from your heart and exploding out from your fingertips...

...your toes...your eyes...your nose...your lips...

...and all you can do is dance.

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is not mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself. ~Havelock Ellis