Related Features

Contribute

Your support helps us cover dance in New York City and beyond! Donate now.

The Dance Enthusiast Asks: "What is the most or least inspirational comment ever made about your work?"

The Dance Enthusiast Asks: "What is the most or least inspirational comment ever made about your work?"
Christine Jowers/Follow @cmmjowers on Instagram

By Christine Jowers/Follow @cmmjowers on Instagram
View Profile | More From This Author

Published on December 8, 2009

“What is the most, or least inspirational comment ever made about your work?
What have you learned from that comment?”


Annmaria Mazzini, Dancer with The Paul Taylor Dance Company

Can I share something a peer once said to me?

My beautiful and inspiring friend Shanti Guirao (of Battleworks) and I were students at SMU together. After I performed in a particularly brutal and somewhat subversive theatre piece, she exclaimed to me with earnest and sincere congratulations, "I've never seen you look so ugly!"

I remember feeling both relieved and elated...the doubt I experienced working on that wonderfully frightening project felt instantly validated.

All at once I realized that there are no rules, there is strength in vulnerability, and there is liberation in diving into the darkness and meeting the shadow.

I continue to treasure that compliment. My sensitive and wise friend revealed a whole other world to me, one which continues to inform and enlighten my personal exploration in this art that I love so much!

 

Laura Peterson, Artistic Director/Choreographer/Performer- Laura Peterson Choreographylpchoreography.com

I always feel really great when a critic has written something nice and I feel that I have succeeded at what I was striving for in that particular work.

But this one moment comes back to me more often. I had just shown a piece to a teacher I had and I remember that she looked at me pretty seriously and said, "Keep going."

Being an artist requires perseverance. I think about it when I'm tired or unsure or just in the middle of something hard. Keep going.

*Laura Peterson Choreography premier of new work Wooden - Culturemart at HERE Arts January 12,13. www.here.org

 


 

Nick Ross, Artistic Director/Choreographer Nicholas Andre Dance

"Adagio is for your soul!"

It made me realize that dancing comes from within and technique is great but its all external, being a great performer is something else!

Nicholas Andre Dance will be performing at the Joyce SoHO Thursday December 17th- Sunday December 20th at 8pm

See: www.nicholasandredance.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdh3f57mARU
 
 
 

 


The Dance Enthusiast Asks questions and creates conversation.
For more of The Dance Enthusiast Asks, click here.


The Dance Enthusiast - News, Reviews, Interviews and an Open Invitation for YOU to join the Dance Conversation.

Related Features

More from this Author