“
To understand what I am saying, you have to believe that dance is something other than technique. We forget where the movements come from. They are born from life. When you create a new work, the point of departure must be contemporary life -- not existing forms of dance.
”
”
Pina Bausch
“
Man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.
”
”
C.S. Lewis
“
Sometimes in life confusion tends to arise and only dialogue of dance seems to make sense.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
Caution not spirit, let it roam wild; for in that natural state dance embraces divine frequency.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
If movements were a spark every dancer would desire to light up in flames.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
Dance as the narration of a magical story; that recites on lips, illuminates imaginations and embraces the most sacred depths of souls.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
If spirit is the seed, dance is the water of its evolution.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
Dance is the timeless interpretation of life.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
Show me a person who found love in his life and did not celebrate it with a dance.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
If you opened the dictionary and searched for the meaning of a Goddess, you would find the reflection of a dancing lady.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
Don't breathe to survive; dance and feel alive.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
Life is an affair of mystery; shared with companions of music, dance and poetry.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
Dance to inspire, dance to freedom, life is about experiences so dance and let yourself become free.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
Through synergy of intellect, artistry and grace came into existence the blessing of a dancer.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
DANCE – Defeat All Negativity (via) Creative Expression.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
She who is a dancer can only sway the silk of her hair like the summer breeze.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
I wasn't trying to make you jealous. But if jealousy does this to you, I might need to consider it.” He gripped my sides firmly, letting his lips gently dance over mine, “Mags, I’m yours. You have nothing to worry about.
”
”
Kristen Hope Mazzola (Crashing Back Down (Crashing, #1))
“
Dance is the ritual of immortality.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
One step, two steps, three steps; like winds of time experience joy of centuries, when movements become revelations of the dance of destinies.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
Somewhere, a rattlesnake strike makes the dance begin. Three hawks float in the light blue sky overhead. Crows caw and the sweet seduction of lavender fills my head. And she waltzes through my thoughts.
”
”
Hunter S. Jones (September Again)
“
experience tells us that we can only love because we are born out of love, that we can only give because our life is a gift, and that we can only make others free because we are set free by Him whose heart is greater than ours. When we have found the anchor places for our lives in our own center, we can be free to let others enter into the space created for them and allow them to dance their own dance, sing their own song and speak their own language without fear.
”
”
Henri J.M. Nouwen (The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society (Doubleday Image Book. an Image Book))
“
Becky! Love!" Mum has pushed her way through her dancing guests to reach me. "What's wrong? Has labor started?"
Honestly. My family has no idea about contemporary urban street dance trends.
”
”
Sophie Kinsella (Shopaholic & Baby (Shopaholic, #5))
“
You dance?”
“I think that might be overly optimistic,” he said. “I do something. I’ll try not to hurt you.
”
”
Robyn Carr (Virgin River (Virgin River, #1))
“
Burdened no more is soul for whom life flows through dance and not breath.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
Dance is that delicacy of life radiating every particle of our existence with happiness.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men - some in their brushed Confederate uniforms - on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.
”
”
William Faulkner (A Rose for Emily)
“
Every dance you make belongs to you. It is part of your collection. When you think of it like that, you'll want to make your next routine the best you've ever made!
”
”
Torron-Lee Dewar (50 Ways to Become a Better Choreographer)
“
Transcend the terrestrial; surpass the celestial, from nature’s hands when you receive the sublime pleasures of dance.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
There was no place else she'd rather be than slow-dancing on a beach with the sexiest, sweetest, most attentive man she'd ever been with.
”
”
Robin Bielman (Keeping Mr. Right Now (Kisses in the Sand, #1))
“
Behind the heavens,
life and death, a tone,
Behind the heart,
a butterfly dancing,
In the end everything is simple,
as simple as a leaf that one holds in one’s hand,
as simple as the laughter of a child.
”
”
Alexis Karpouzos (The self-criticism of science: The contemporary philosophy of science & the problem of the scientific consciousness.)
“
Mee-Hae, like the perfect, gentle, and understanding woman from contemporary books of the Old World, lets the Monk avoid her crucial question, the question she should never have overlooked. The question even the Monk will regret not answering right now, right here, not only for her sake but also for his own.
”
”
Misba (The Oldest Dance (Wisdom Revolution, #2))
“
Karma literally means “deed” or “act” and more broadly names the universal principle of cause and effect, action and reaction which governs all life. Karma is a natural law of the mind, just as gravity is a law of matter.
”
”
Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (Dancing With Siva: Hinduism's Contemporary Catechism: An illustrated sourcebook, timeline and lexicon exploring how to know the Divine, honor all creation and see God everywhere, in everyone)
“
I whisper, “What do I need?”
“Release.”
That one word scrapes across my nerves and lights me on fire.
His deep voice dances on the air, murmuring hotly, “You need someone who will take all of your thoughts and responsibilities away from you, who lets you be free to just feel.”
Suddenly, his hands are on my waist and he’s pulling me onto his lap and I’m straddling his thigh and his hands are in my hair and his lips are on mine…
And the world stops.
”
”
D.L. Hess (Sir: The Awakening (The Awakening Series Book 2))
“
When a dancer performs, melody transforms into a carriage, expressions turn into fuel and spirit experiences a journey to a world where passion attains fulfillment.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
Her pulse pounded in her ears. She didn't need to turn around to know he was standing behind her. Most likely with a smirk at catching her impromptu belly dance.
”
”
Rachel Harris (Accidentally Married on Purpose (Love and Games, #3))
“
If thoughts and emotions alone could cause things to happen, thousands of my contemporaries would have married the Beatles in 1964.
”
”
Starhawk (The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religions of the Great Goddess)
“
It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy's clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily 'true' or 'false', but as 'academic' or 'practical', 'outworn' or 'contemporary', 'conventional' or 'ruthless'. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church.
”
”
C.S. Lewis
“
Burdened no more is soul for whom life flows through dance like breath.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
Make dance the mission every moment seeks to accomplish.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
He leaned in close, his mouth near her ear. “Dance with me.
”
”
Donna Grant (The Hero (Sons of Texas, #1))
“
Spirit is a child, the tune of dancing feet its lullaby.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
Gannon came from loud, passionate Italian stock that wasn’t afraid to smash a plate to make a statement. Paige, on the other hand, systematically choked down any temper and, with frosty efficiency, made him dance like a fucking puppet.
”
”
Lucy Score (Mr. Fixer Upper)
“
and the very old men--some in their brushed Confederate uniforms--on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years.
”
”
William Faulkner (Light in August)
“
Luke!...We have to be able to do cool dancing so we don't embarrass our child!"
"I'm a very cool dancer," replies Luke. "Very cool indeed,"
"No you're not!"
"I had dance lessons in my teens, you know," he retorts. "I can waltz like Fred Astire."
"Waltz?" I echo derisively. "That's not cool! We need to know all the street moves. Watch me."
I do a couple funky head-wriggle body-pop maneuvers, like they do on rap videos. When I look up, Luke is gaping at me.
"Sweetheart," he says. "What are you doing?"
"It's hip-hop!" I say. "It's street!"
"Becky! Love!" Mum has pushed her way through her dancing guests to reach me. "What's wrong? Has labour started?"
Honestly. My family has no idea about contemporary urban steet dance trends.
”
”
Sophie Kinsella (Shopaholic & Baby (Shopaholic, #5))
“
I do not write every day. I write to the questions and issues before me. I write to deadlines. I write out of my passions. And I write to make peace with my own contradictory nature. For me, writing is a spiritual practice. A small bowl of water sits on my desk, a reminder that even if nothing is happening on the page, something is happening in the room--evaporation. And I always light a candle when I begin to write, a reminder that I have now entered another realm, call it the realm of the Spirit. I am mindful that when one writes, one leaves this world and enters another.
My books are collages made from journals, research, and personal experience. I love the images rendered in journal entries, the immediacy that is captured on the page, the handwritten notes. I love the depth of ideas and perspective that research brings to a story, be it biological or anthropological studies or the insights brought to the page by the scholarly work of art historians.
When I go into a library, I feel like I am a sleuth looking to solve a mystery. I am completely inspired by the pursuit of knowledge through various references. I read newpapers voraciously. I love what newspapers say about contemporary culture. And then you go back to your own perceptions, your own words, and weigh them against all you have brought together. I am interested in the kaleidoscope of ideas, how you bring many strands of thought into a book and weave them together as one piece of coherent fabric, while at the same time trying to create beautiful language in the service of the story. This is the blood work of the writer.
Writing is also about a life engaged. And so, for me, community work, working in the schools or with grassroots conservation organizations is another critical component of my life as a writer. I cannot separate the writing life from a spiritual life, from a life as a teacher or activist or my life intertwined with family and the responsibilities we carry within our own homes. Writing is daring to feel what nurtures and breaks our hearts. Bearing witness is its own form of advocacy. It is a dance with pain and beauty.
”
”
Terry Tempest Williams
“
The supersession of the round dance, choral and figure dances by dancing à deux, whether this take the form of gyrating as in the waltz or polka or the slitherings and slidings and even acrobatics of contemporary dancing, is probably to be regarded as a symptom of declining culture. There
”
”
Johan Huizinga (Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture)
“
Even harsh karma, when faced in wisdom, can be the greatest catalyst for spiritual unfoldment. Performing daily sādhana, keeping good company, pilgrimaging to holy places, seeing to others’ needs—these evoke the higher energies, direct the mind to useful thoughts and avoid the creation of troublesome new karmas.
”
”
Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (Dancing With Siva: Hinduism's Contemporary Catechism: An illustrated sourcebook, timeline and lexicon exploring how to know the Divine, honor all creation and see God everywhere, in everyone)
“
These shoes were made for dancing, not propping up a bar stool."
"Those shoes were made for something," Alex said. "And it sure as hell isn't dancing.
”
”
Christina Phillips (Hold Me Until Forever (Grayson Brothers, #3))
“
We are always dancing between form and impermanence.
”
”
Michael Stone (The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner)
“
Limit not to only five, when the divine gifts the supreme sixth; the sense of dance
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
Dancing was my sanctuary. It didn’t need to be intruded on by the walking embodiment of conceitedness.
”
”
Carly Spade (Apollo (Contemporary Mythos, #2))
“
Dancing is like a symphony. One melody flows into the other with intricate moving parts. If you were to rearrange them or only play one part, it ruins the entire composition.
”
”
Carly Spade (Hades (Contemporary Mythos, #1))
“
We neither fear death nor look forward to it, but revere it as a most exalted experience. Life, death and the afterlife are all part of our path to perfect oneness with God.
”
”
Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (Dancing With Siva: Hinduism's Contemporary Catechism: An illustrated sourcebook, timeline and lexicon exploring how to know the Divine, honor all creation and see God everywhere, in everyone)
“
Be grateful if you look younger than your age
while also being wiser than many of your contemporaries.
It means the fire of your Old Soul is alive and well.
Embrace it.
Surround yourself with those who celebrate this fiery Light
shining bright out of your soul;
those who are summoned to fan your glimmering flames
and dance within them.
Embrace them.
”
”
Omar Cherif
“
He moved with a slow gait. I never saw him dance. He was a man who wrote, who interpreted the world. Wisdom grew out of being handed just the smallest sliver of emotion. A glance could lead to paragraphs of theory. If he witnessed a new knot among a desert tribe or found a rare palm, it would charm him for weeks. When we came upon messages on our travels – any wording, contemporary or ancient, Arabic on a mud wall, a note in English written in chalk on the fender of a jeep – he would read it and then press his hand upon it as if to touch its possible deeper meanings, to become as intimate as he could with the words.
”
”
Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient)
“
We continued dancing as a swift gale wheeled through the hills of Santa Cruz. Xuan leaned down to whisper into my ear, his lips lightly brushing the helix. “Once upon a time there was a boy, and he loved a girl very much. He was sad because he didn’t think the girl noticed him. Until one day the uni- verse intervened and a beautiful comet brought them together after a tragic accident occurred that day. The boy and the girl found comfort and friendship in each other that night. And something new and extraordinary began to blossom under the heavens, something that would burn with such bright- ness that all the stars would be in awe. And the boy fell madly in love with the girl and promised to always find her, in this life and the next.”
“That’s my favorite story.”
Xuan smiled. “It’s the best one I’ve ever told, Ms. Steel.
”
”
Kayla Cunningham (Fated to Love You (Chasing the Comet Book 1))
“
A murmur ran through the crowd, and I looked around to see what all the fuss was about. Then I saw him, walking past table after table as if everybody weren't stopping to stare at him.
Loki had ventured down from where he'd been hiding in the servants' quarters. Since I'd granted him amnesty, he was no longer being guarded and was free to roman as he pleased, but I hadn't exactly invited him to the wedding.
As Tove and I danced, I didn't take my eyes off Loki. He walked around the dance floor toward the refreshments, but he kept watching me. He got a glass of champagne from the table, and even as he drank his eyes never left me.
Another Markis came over and cut in to dance with me, but I barely noticed when I switched partners. I tried to focus on the person I was dancing with. But there was something about the way Loki looked at me, and I couldn't shake it.
The song had switched to something contemporary, probably the sheet music that Willa had slipped the orchestra. She'd insisted the whole thing would be far too dull if they only played classical.
The murmur died down, and people returned to dancing and talking. Loki took another swig of his champagne, then set the glass down and walked across the dance floor. Everyone parted around him, and I wasn't sure if it was out of fear or respect.
He wore all black, even his shirt. I had no idea where he'd gotten the clothes, but he did look debonair.
"May I have this dance?" Loki asked my dance partner, but his eyes were on me.
"Um, I don't know if you should," the Markis fumbled, but I was already moving away from him.
"No, it's all right," I said.
Uncertainly, the Markis stepped back, and Loki took my hand. When he placed his hand on my back, a shiver ran up my spine, but I tried to hide it and put my hand on his shoulder.
"You know, you weren't invited to this," I told him, but he merely smirked as we began dancing.
"So throw me out."
"I might." I raised my head defiantly, and that only made him laugh.
"If it's as the Princess wishes," he said, but he made no move to step away, and for some odd reason, I felt relieved.
”
”
Amanda Hocking (Ascend (Trylle, #3))
“
For me, this is when the act of watching transforms into the act of witnessing.
To witness something implies a responsiveness, the response/ability of the viewer toward the performer. It is radically different from what we might call the 'consuming' gaze that says 'here, you entertain me, I bought a ticket, and I'm going to sit back and watch.' This traditional gaze doesn't want to get involved, doesn't want to give anything back.
”
”
Ann Cooper Albright (Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance (Studies. Engineering Dynamics Series;9))
“
Audience of angels descend in the ambiance reciting praises in your glory, when you wear your dance shoes, when you arrive at the stage and with every step you take beneath your feet heaven moves. That is the power of dance.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
Like Nietzsche once said: 'And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.' We writers were always like that. The damned, dancing like fools around the world - feeling everything around as if it were an ocean wave.
”
”
W.M Angel (Atlas Loved)
“
We were vicious and violent but elegant and discreet. There was a dance to all of this, one that kept all things flowing in the right direction, a circle that ensured the smartest and brightest would stay on top, not the man with the most guns and the smallest dick.
”
”
Karina Halle (Dirty Angels (Dirty Angels, #1))
“
Dude, what're you waiting for?" Carlos calls. "Plant one on her."
I lift my eyes and am shocked to see Brandon is staring at my mouth. He swallows audibly and flicks his gaze to mine. the emotions darkening the soft green color are too confusing to name.
Does he want to back out?
An exhale of breath leaves Brandon's lips, almost like a laugh, and he scoots closer to me on the blanket. I twist my legs under myself, sitting tall as I face him. He cups my chin and tilts it toward him, drowning me in the now dark-green depths of his eyes, the cologne I gave him for his birthday filling my head. It's woodsy and yummy and I always loved how it smelled on the store testers, but on Brandon, it's even sexier. My eyes flutter closed, and I inhale again, this time slowly. Goose bumps prickle my arms, and my head gets fuzzy.
Brandon slides his hand down the column of my neck and brings the other up, threading his fingers through the hair at my nape. His breath fans across my cheek, and everything south of my bellybutton squeezes tight.
When his mouth first meets mine, it's hesitant, questioning. But as I move my lips with his, he quickly grows bolder, coaxing them apart.
Desire, pure and raw, electrifies my veins as his tongue sweeps my mouth. A whimpering sound springs from my chest, and instinctively, I wrap my arms around his neck, tugging him closer. Needing more. My teeth graze his full bottom lip, and I pull it, sucking on it gently.
He moans and knots his fingers in my hair, and a thrill dances down my back.
Brandon is an amazing kisser, just as I knew he would be. I have no control over my body's reactions. I lose myself in his lips, his tongue, and his strong arms, forgetting time and space and even my surroundings...
”
”
Rachel Harris (The Fine Art of Pretending (The Fine Art of Pretending, #1))
“
[while dancing] The man who was supposed to be her new partner had taken the caller’s final instruction to extremes. From the way Adam’s mouth was locked against Kitty’s he seemed to be anticipating not a temporary split but a lengthy separation. More of a French Fancy than a farmer’s fancy, thought Coralie.
”
”
Christine Stovell (Move Over Darling)
“
So maybe Third World discontent is fomented not merely by poverty, disease, corruption and political oppression but also by mere exposure to First World standards. The average Egyptian was far less likely to die from starvation, plague or violence under Hosni Mubarak than under Ramses II or Cleopatra. Never had the material condition of most Egyptians been so good. You’d think they would have been dancing in the streets in 2011, thanking Allah for their good fortune. Instead they rose up furiously to overthrow Mubarak. They weren’t comparing themselves to their ancestors under the pharaohs, but rather to their contemporaries in the affluent West.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
On his Grand Tour, McAllister made a careful study of all aspects of social life: court manners, architecture, fashion, food, drink, watering spots, dances. He returned to the United States as what one contemporary called “the most complete dandy in America,” and established himself in New York as essentially a professional snob.
”
”
Anderson Cooper (Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty)
“
Now give me some advice about how to take full advantage of this city. I’m always looking to improve my odds.”
“Just what I’d expect from a horny actuary.”
“I’m serious.”
Carlos reflected for a moment on the problem at hand. He actually had never needed or tried to take full advantage of the city in order to meet women, but he thought about all of his friends who regularly did. His face lit up as he thought of some helpful advice: “Get into the arts.”
“The arts?”
“Yeah.”
“But I’m not artistic.”
“It doesn’t matter. Many women are into the arts. Theater. Painting. Dance. They love that stuff.”
“You want me to get into dance? Earthquakes have better rhythm than me…And can you really picture me in those tights?”
“Take an art history class. Learn photography. Get involved in a play or an independent film production. Get artsy, Sammy. I’m telling you, the senoritas dig that stuff.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You need to sign up for a bunch of artistic activities. But you can’t let on that it’s all just a pretext to meet women. You have to take a real interest in the subject or they’ll quickly sniff out your game.”
“I don’t know…It’s all so foreign to me…I don’t know the first thing about being artistic.”
“Heeb, this is the time to expand your horizons. And you’re in the perfect city to do it. New York is all about reinventing yourself. Get out of your comfort zones. Become more of a Renaissance man. That’s much more interesting to women.
”
”
Zack Love (Sex in the Title: A Comedy about Dating, Sex, and Romance in NYC (Back When Phones Weren't So Smart))
“
She looked up and their eyes locked. “Want to be my birthday present?” she asked in a breathy whisper.
Chase’s mother didn’t raise any fools. He released her hips and trailed his hand down her arm until their fingers entwined.
“Let’s get out of here.”
He tugged her from the dance floor, trying not to rush like he was running from a fire. But, damn. There was a fire in his britches.
”
”
Tamara Hoffa (Chasing Love)
“
Loneliness is one of the most universal human experiences, but our contemporary Western society has heightened the awareness of our loneliness to an unusual degree. During a recent visit to New York City, I wrote the following note to myself: Sitting in the subway, I am surrounded by silent people hidden behind their newspapers or staring away in the world of their own fantasies. Nobody speaks with a stranger, and a patroling policeman keeps reminding me that people are not out to help each other. But when my eyes wander over the walls of the train covered with invitations to buy more or new products, I see young, beautiful people enjoying each other in a gentle embrace, playful men and women smiling at each other in fast sailboats, proud explorers on horseback encouraging each other to take brave risks, fearless children dancing on a sunny beach, and charming girls always ready to serve me in airplanes and ocean liners. While the subway train runs from one dark tunnel into the other and I am nervously aware where I keep my money, the words and images decorating my fearful world speak about love, gentleness, tenderness and about a joyful togetherness of spontaneous people.
”
”
Henri J.M. Nouwen (Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life)
“
He held me much closer than Carl had. His grip was firm and possessive. It left no doubt in anyone’s mind who I belonged to and that alone sent a thrill through me that I knew was wrong. He imprisoned me in the unwavering chains of his gaze, leaving me powerless to break away while he scrutinized my soul. I wondered what he was looking for.
“You came.”
The hand on my waist slid over the swell in my spine where it connected to the rise of my backside. His palm flattened against the spot and I was drawn even closer, eliminating what modicum of space there had been between us. My soft frame was cradled seamlessly into the unyielding length of his in all the places that counted, thighs, pelvis, stomach … breasts. I couldn’t even breathe without feeling the skim of my hardened nipples against his chest. I couldn’t move without feeling his cock reaching for me through miles of fabric to prod into my midsection.
He was long and hard and I grew wet from that knowledge alone.
“Gabriel…”
“I couldn’t leave without having this dance with you.”
My fingers tightened around his shoulder. “Why?”
His quiet exhalation whispered over the curve of my cheeks, smelling of mint and despair. “Because the further away I got from you, the more it felt like if I kept driving, I would lose you for good and that scared me like nothing else.
”
”
Airicka Phoenix (The Voyeur Next Door)
“
What we are faced with in our culture is the post-Christian version of the doctrine of original sin: all human endeavor is radically flawed, and the journalists who take delight in pointing this out are simply telling over and over again the story of Genesis 3 as applied to today’s leaders, politicians, royalty and rock stars. And our task, as image-bearing, God-loving, Christshaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to the world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to the world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to the world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion. So the key I propose for translating Jesus’ unique message to the Israel of his day into our message to our contemporaries is to grasp the parallel, which is woven deeply into both Testaments, between the human call to bear God’s image and Israel’s call to be the light of the world. Humans were made to reflect God’s creative stewardship into the world. Israel was made to bring God’s rescuing love to bear upon the world. Jesus came as the true Israel, the world’s true light, and as the true image of the invisible God. He was the true Jew, the true human. He has laid the foundation, and we must build upon it. We are to be the bearers both of his redeeming love and of his creative stewardship: to celebrate it, to model it, to proclaim it, to dance to it. “As the Father sent me, so I send you; receive the Holy Spirit; forgive sins and they are forgiven, retain them and they are retained.” That last double command belongs exactly at this point. We are to go out into the world with the divine authority to forgive and retain sins. When Jesus forgave sins, they said he was blaspheming; how then can we imagine such a thing for ourselves? Answer: because of the gift of the Holy Spirit. God intends to do through us for the wider world that for which the foundation was laid in Jesus. We are to live and tell the story of the prodigal and the older brother; to announce God’s glad, exuberant, richly healing welcome for sinners, and at the same time God’s sorrowful but implacable opposition to those who persist in arrogance, oppression and greed. Following Christ in the power of the Spirit means bringing to our world the shape of the gospel: forgiveness, the best news that anyone can ever hear, for all who yearn for it, and judgment for all who insist on dehumanizing themselves and others by their continuing pride, injustice and greed.
”
”
N.T. Wright (The Challenge of Jesus)
“
The Eternal Return has certainly not been thought by philosophers or by those who are concerned about Nietzsche in the contemporary history of ideas, and this because the Eternal Return can not be thought of. It is a revelation that presents next to the Silvaplana rock, or on the threshold of the Gateway of the Moment, where the Two Ways meet.
You will have to travel step by step along the path of Western yoga that Nietzsche rediscovered and practiced, putting his feet in the tracks that he left in the paths of the high peaks, relive their great pains and divine glories, reaching to reach similar tonalities of the soul, to be possessed by Dionysus and
his ancient drunkenness, Luciferian, that makes dance in the solitude of forests and lost from a solar age, laughing and crying at the same time.
And this is not achieved by the philosophers of the intellect or the beings 'of the flock'. For to achieve this, the Circle will have to be traversed for several eternities, again at the Gateway of the Moment, already predestined at noon.
In addition, the doctrine of the Eternal Return is selective. As the initiatory practice Tantric Panshatattva is not for the paśu [animal], but only for some heroes or viryas, thus the Noon is reached by the 'Lords of the Earth' and by the poets of the Will to Power, predestined in a mysterious way to perform the
Superman, that individualistic and aristocratic mutation.
The 'herd', the vulgar, has nothing to do with all this, including here the scientists, technologists and most philosophers, politicians and government of the Kaliyuga.
Nietzsche's description of the Eternal Return is found in some
aphorisms that precede 'The Gay Science', Joyful Science, using Nietzsche the Provencal term, Occitan, from 'Gay'. Joyful Science will be that of the one who has accepted the Eternal Return of all things and has transmuted the values. The one of Superman.
There is also a description in the schemes of 'The Will to Power'. In they all take hold, with genius that transcends their time, of the scientific knowledge and the mechanics of the time, which does not lose validity to the doctrine, let us say better to the revealed Idea, to the Revelation that, of
somehow, it was also in the Pythagoreans, in their Aryan-Hyperborean form, differentiating itself from other elaborations made in the millennia of the East. Also would have been veiled in the Persian reformer Zarathustra.
We are going to reproduce what Nietzsche has written about the Eternal Return. In the schemes of 'The Will to Power', he says: 'Everything returns and returns eternally; We can not escape this.
”
”
Miguel Serrano
“
But are you not being a trifle naive? It sounds as if
you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy's clutches.
That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans
still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved
they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to
alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly
press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been
accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies
dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily “true”
of “false”, but as “academic” or “practical”, “outworn” or “contemporary”, “conventional”
or “ruthless”. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church.
Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is
strong, or stark, or courageous — that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort
of thing he cares about.
The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy's own
ground. He can argue too; whereas in really practical propaganda of the kind I am
suggesting He has been shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior of Our Father
Below. By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is
awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted
so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient
the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the
stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the
stream. Teach him to call it “real life” and don't let him ask what he means by “real”.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
“
That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily ‘true’ or ‘false’, but as ‘academic’ or ‘practical’, ‘outworn’ or ‘contemporary’, ‘conventional’ or ‘ruthless. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don’t waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That’s the sort of thing he cares about.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
“
I have a weird graphic I made for myself once, and it's the "lineage tree" of everyone that has inspired me and more importantly given me the permission to be myself in my work. There's a slew of people from theater: Erwin Piscator, Chekhov, Mac Wellman, Stein; and then a whole lot of wonderful works that are called novels: everything from Tristram Shandy to Bouvard and Pecuchet, to Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas, and Finnegan's Wake and Invisible Man, and then contemporary writers I'm currently reading like Renee Gladman and Anakana Schofield. There are many more in my graphic also: there's Beckett's novels and Melancholy of Resistance, and there's Reznikoff and Dos Passos, there are contemporary poets I admire like Jena Osman, dance-writers like Michelle Ellsworth, and books I can't help read for fun like Muriel Spark. But there's Groucho Marx and Oscar Wilde. It's a huge question and the answers would likely change daily. But these I'm talking about here are in the pantheon.
”
”
Thalia Field
“
Yet the homogeneity of contemporary humanity is most apparent when it comes to our view of the natural world and of the human body. If you fell sick a thousand years ago, it mattered a great deal where you lived. In Europe, the resident priest would probably tell you that you had made God angry and that in order to regain your health you should donate something to the church, make a pilgrimage to a sacred site, and pray fervently for God’s forgiveness. Alternatively, the village witch might explain that a demon had possessed you and that she could cast it out using song, dance, and the blood of a black cockerel. In the Middle East, doctors brought up on classical traditions might explain that your four bodily humors were out of balance and that you should harmonize them with a proper diet and foul-smelling potions. In India, Ayurvedic experts would offer their own theories concerning the balance between the three bodily elements known as doshas and recommend a treatment of herbs, massages, and yoga postures. Chinese physicians, Siberian shamans, African witch doctors, Amerindian medicine men—every empire, kingdom, and tribe had its own traditions and experts, each espousing different views about the human body and the nature of sickness, and each offering their own cornucopia of rituals, concoctions, and cures. Some of them worked surprisingly well, whereas others were little short of a death sentence. The only thing that united European, Chinese, African, and American medical practices was that everywhere at least a third of all children died before reaching adulthood, and average life expectancy was far below fifty.14 Today, if you happen to be sick, it makes much less difference where you live. In Toronto, Tokyo, Tehran, or Tel Aviv, you will be taken to similar-looking hospitals, where you will meet doctors in white coats who learned the same scientific theories in the same medical colleges. They will follow identical protocols and use identical tests to reach very similar diagnoses. They will then dispense the same medicines produced by the same international drug companies. There are still some minor cultural differences, but Canadian, Japanese, Iranian, and Israeli physicians hold much the same views about the human body and human diseases. After the Islamic State captured Raqqa and Mosul, it did not tear down the local hospitals. Rather, it launched an appeal to Muslim doctors and nurses throughout the world to volunteer their services there.15 Presumably even Islamist doctors and nurses believe that the body is made of cells, that diseases are caused by pathogens, and that antibiotics kill bacteria.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
“
It was also revealed that the reason I am cruel to others is because I have low-self-esteem. Because I don’t love myself, I am unable to understand those who do love me in spite of it all, and so I test them. “You love me even when I do this? Or this? Or this?” Even when the other person forgives me, I am unable to understand their forgiveness, and when they give up on me, I torture and console myself with the “fact” that no one could ever love me. That goddamn self-esteem. [...] Looking more closely at myself, there are parts that I've improved on. I still remain someone who is unable to love herself. But as I had that thought, I had another: light and darkness are part of the same thing. Happiness and unhappiness alternate throughout life, as in a dance. So as long as I keep going and don’t give up, surely I will keep having moments of tears and laughter.
This book, therefore, ends not with answers but with a wish. I want to love and be loved. I want to find a way where I don’t hurt myself. I want to live a life where I say things are good more than things are bad. I want to keep failing and discovering new and better directions. I want to enjoy the tides of feeling in me as the rhythms of life. I want to be the kind of person who can walk inside the vast darkness and find the one fragment of sunlight I can linger in for a long time.
Some day, I will.
”
”
Baek Se-hee (I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki)
“
Coming as a kind of pleasure-package with her parents and sisters, as a girl Theodora performed acrobatic tricks and erotic dances in and around the hippodrome – part of the fringe of shows, spectacles and penny theatricals that accompanied the games. It was said by contemporary chroniclers that one of Theodora’s most popular turns was a re-enactment of the story of Leda (the mother of Helen of Troy) and the Swan (Zeus in disguise). The Greek myth went that Zeus was so enraptured with Queen Leda when he espied her bathing by the banks of the River Eurotas that he turned himself into a swan so that he could ravish the Spartan Queen. Theodora, as Leda, would leave a trail of grain up on to (some said into) her body, which the ‘swan’ (in Constantinople in fact a goose) then eagerly consumed. The Empress’s detractors delighted in memorialising the fact that Theodora’s services were eagerly sought out for anal intercourse, as both an active and a passive partner. As a child and as an adolescent woman Theodora would have been considered dirt, but she was, physically, right at the heart of human affairs in a burgeoning city in interesting times.
Theodora was also, obviously, wildly attractive. Born in either Cyprus or Syria, as a teenager – already the mother of a young girl and with a history of abortions – she left Constantinople as the companion of a Syrian official, the governor of Libya Pentapolis. The two travelled to North Africa, where, after four years of maltreatment, she found herself abandoned by the Byzantine official, her meal-ticket revoked. A discarded mistress, on the road, was as wretched as things could get in the sixth century. (...)
Theodora tried to find her way back to the mother city, making ends meet as a prostitute, and the only people to give the twenty-year-old reject shelter were a group of Christians in the city of Alexandria. That random act of kindness was epoch-forming.
”
”
Bettany Hughes (Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities)
“
And what’s the solution of preventing this debacle? Plenty of ‘em! The Communists have a patent Solution they know will work. So have the Fascists, and the rigid American Constitutionalists—who call themselves advocates of Democracy, without any notion what the word ought to mean; and the Monarchists—who are certain that if we could just resurrect the Kaiser and the Czar and King Alfonso, everybody would be loyal and happy again, and the banks would simply force credit on small business men at 2 per cent. And all the preachers—they tell you that they alone have the inspired Solution. “Well, gentlemen, I have listened to all your Solutions, and I now inform you that I, and I alone, except perhaps for Walt Trowbridge and the ghost of Pareto, have the perfect, the inevitable, the only Solution, and that is: There is no Solution! There will never be a state of society anything like perfect! “There never will be a time when there won’t be a large proportion of people who feel poor no matter how much they have, and envy their neighbors who know how to wear cheap clothes showily, and envy neighbors who can dance or make love or digest better.” Doremus suspected that, with the most scientific state, it would be impossible for iron deposits always to find themselves at exactly the rate decided upon two years before by the National Technocratic Minerals Commission, no matter how elevated and fraternal and Utopian the principles of the commissioners. His Solution, Doremus pointed out, was the only one that did not flee before the thought that a thousand years from now human beings would probably continue to die of cancer and earthquake and such clownish mishaps as slipping in bathtubs. It presumed that mankind would continue to be burdened with eyes that grow weak, feet that grow tired, noses that itch, intestines vulnerable to bacilli, and generative organs that are nervous until the age of virtue and senility. It seemed to him unidealistically probable, for all the “contemporary furniture” of the 1930’s, that most people would continue, at least for a few hundred years, to sit in chairs, eat from dishes upon tables, read books—no matter how many cunning phonographic substitutes might be invented, wear shoes or sandals, sleep in beds, write with some sort of pens, and in general spend twenty or twenty-two hours a day much as they had spent them in 1930, in 1630.
”
”
Sinclair Lewis (It Can't Happen Here)
“
The Eternal Return has certainly not been thought by philosophers or by those who are concerned about Nietzsche in the contemporary history of ideas, and this because the Eternal Return can not be thought of. It is a revelation that presents itself next to the Silvaplana rock, or on the threshold of the Gateway of the Moment, where the Two Ways meet.
You will have to travel step by step along the path of Western yoga that Nietzsche rediscovered and practiced, putting his feet in the tracks that he left in the paths of the high peaks, relive their great pains and divine glories, reaching to reach similar tonalities of the soul, to be possessed by Dionysus and his ancient drunkenness, Luciferian, that makes dance in the solitude of forests and lost from a solar age, laughing and crying at the same time.
And this is not achieved by the philosophers of the intellect or the beings 'of the flock'. For to achieve this, the Circle will have to be traversed for several eternities, again at the Gateway of the Moment, already predestined at noon.
In addition, the doctrine of the Eternal Return is selective. As the initiatory practice Tantric Panshatattva is not for the paśu [animal], but only for some heroes or viryas, thus the Noon is reached by the 'Lords of the Earth' and by the poets of the Will to Power, predestined in a mysterious way to perform the Superman, that individualistic and aristocratic mutation.
The 'herd', the vulgar, has nothing to do with all this, including here the scientists, technologists and most philosophers, politicians and government of the Kaliyuga.
Nietzsche's description of the Eternal Return is found in some aphorisms that precede 'The Gay Science', Joyful Science, using Nietzsche the Provencal term, Occitan, from 'Gay'. Joyful Science will be that of the one who has accepted the Eternal Return of all things and has transmuted the values. The one of Superman.
There is also a description in the schemes of 'The Will to Power'. In they all take hold, with genius that transcends their time, of the scientific knowledge and the mechanics of the time, which does not lose validity to the doctrine, let us say better to the revealed Idea, to the Revelation that, of
somehow, it was also in the Pythagoreans, in their Aryan-Hyperborean form, differentiating itself from other elaborations made in the millennia of the East. Also would have been veiled in the Persian reformer Zarathustra.
We are going to reproduce what Nietzsche has written about the Eternal Return. In the schemes of 'The Will to Power', he says: 'Everything returns and returns eternally; We can not escape this.
”
”
Miguel Serrano
“
The Eternal Return has certainly not been thought by philosophers or by those who are concerned about Nietzsche in the contemporary history of ideas, and this because the Eternal Return can not be thought of. It is a revelation that presents itself next to the Silvaplana rock, or on the threshold of the Gateway of the Moment, where the Two Ways meet.
You will have to travel step by step along the path of Western yoga that Nietzsche rediscovered and practiced, putting his feet in the tracks that he left in the paths of the high peaks, relive their great pains and divine glories, reaching to reach similar tonalities of the soul, to be possessed by Dionysus and his ancient drunkenness, Luciferian, that makes dance in the solitude of forests and lost from a solar age, laughing and crying at the same time.
And this is not achieved by the philosophers of the intellect or the beings 'of the flock'. For to achieve this, the Circle will have to be traversed for several eternities, again at the Gateway of the Moment, already predestined at noon.
In addition, the doctrine of the Eternal Return is selective. As the initiatory practice Tantric Panshatattva is not for the paśu [animal], but only for some heroes or viryas, thus the Noon is reached by the 'Lords of the Earth' and by the poets of the Will to Power, predestined in a mysterious way to perform the Superman, that individualistic and aristocratic mutation.
The 'herd', the vulgar, has nothing to do with all this, including here the scientists, technologists and most philosophers, politicians and government of the Kaliyuga.
Nietzsche's description of the Eternal Return is found in some aphorisms that precede 'The Gay Science', Joyful Science, using Nietzsche the Provencal term, Occitan, from 'Gay'. Joyful Science will be that of the one who has accepted the Eternal Return of all things and has transmuted the values. The one of Superman.
There is also a description in the schemes of 'The Will to Power'. In they all take hold, with genius that transcends their time, of the scientific knowledge and the mechanics of the time, which does not lose validity to the doctrine, let us say better to the revealed Idea, to the Revelation that, of somehow, it was also in the Pythagoreans, in their Aryan-Hyperborean form, differentiating itself from other elaborations made in the millennia of the East. Also would have been veiled in the Persian reformer Zarathustra.
We are going to reproduce what Nietzsche has written about the Eternal Return. In the schemes of 'The Will to Power', he says: 'Everything returns and returns eternally; We can not escape this.
”
”
Miguel Serrano
“
If a season like the Great Rebellion ever came to him again, he feared, it could never be in that same personal, random array of picaresque acts he was to recall and celebrate in later years at best furious and nostalgic; but rather with a logic that chilled the comfortable perversity of the heart, that substituted capability for character, deliberate scheme for political epiphany (so incomparably African); and for Sarah, the sjambok, the dances of death between Warmbad and Keetmanshoop, the taut haunches of his Firelily, the black corpse impaled on a thorn tree in a river swollen with sudden rain, for these the dearest canvases in his soul's gallery, it was to substitute the bleak, abstracted and for him rather meaningless hanging on which he now turned his back, but which was to backdrop his retreat until he reached the Other Wall, the engineering design for a world he knew with numb leeriness nothing could now keep from becoming reality, a world whose full despair he, at the vantage of eighteen years later, couldn't even find adequate parables for, but a design whose first fumbling sketches he thought must have been done the year after Jacob Marengo died, on that terrible coast, where the beach between Luderitzbucht and the cemetery was actually littered each morning with a score of identical female corpses, an agglomeration no more substantial-looking than seaweed against the unhealthy yellow sand; where the soul's passage was more a mass migration across that choppy fetch of Atlantic the wind never left alone, from an island of low cloud, like an anchored prison ship, to simple integration with the unimaginable mass of their continent; where the single line of track still edged toward a Keetmanshoop that could in no conceivable iconology be any part of the Kingdom of Death; where, finally, humanity was reduced, out of a necessity which in his loonier moments he could almost believe was only Deutsch-Sudwestafrika's (actually he knew better), out of a confrontation the young of one's contemporaries, God help them, had yet to make, humanity was reduced to a nervous, disquieted, forever inadequate but indissoluble Popular Front against deceptively unpolitical and apparently minor enemies, enemies that would be with him to the grave: a sun with no shape, a beach alien as the moon's antarctic, restless concubines in barbed wire, salt mists, alkaline earth, the Benguela Current that would never cease bringing sand to raise the harbor floor, the inertia of rock, the frailty of flesh, the structural unreliability of thorns; the unheard whimper of a dying woman; the frightening but necessary cry of the strand wolf in the fog.
”
”
Thomas Pynchon (V.)
“
Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”
Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '99: Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.
I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh never mind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.
You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4:00 pm on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing everyday that scares you.
Sing.
Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts; don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead; sometimes you’re behind; the race is long, and in the end it’s only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive; forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters; throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you wanna do with your life; the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.
Get plenty of calcium.
Be kind to your knees; you’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Maybe you’ll marry -- maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children -- maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40 -- maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either -- your choices are half chance; so are everybody else’s.
Enjoy your body; use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.
Dance.
even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.
Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines; they will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents; you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography, in lifestyle, because the older you get the more you need the people you knew when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.
Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise; politicians will philander; you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund; maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.
Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia: dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth.
But trust me on the sunscreen.
Baz Luhrmannk, William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (1996)
”
”
Baz Luhrmann (Romeo & Juliet: The Contemporary Film, The Classic Play)
“
I came all prepared for a lapis show-and-tell, but you know more about it than I do."...
Lindsey gave him a pleading look and brushed her fingertips over the back of his hand, sending tingles up his arm. "Show me."...
"When it's cut and polished like this, it practically glows. Golden specks of pyrite dance across the blue, like stars in a denim sky.
”
”
Tracy March (Should've Said No (Thistle Bend, #1))
“
The course I will be seeking to pursue with the company is one of reconciliation,” Mr. Cherkaoui said in a statement. “For a number of years there has been a constantly growing exchange between the different dance disciplines, as classical ballet and contemporary dance increasingly complement each other.” Ben Munisteri Is Back, Out of a Time Warp Julieta Cervantes for The New York Times Katie Weir, foreground, in a piece by the choreographer Ben Munisteri, at Actors Fund Arts Center in Brooklyn.
”
”
Anonymous
“
She hesitated a moment then slipped her arm through his. "Just remember, I lead, you follow."
"Okay, but when we're dancing at the wedding, I lead, you follow."
She sighed dramatically. "I guess I can agree to that."
He chuckled. "See? I have a feeling this the beginning of a beautiful fake relationship."
She worried her bottom lip as they walked toward the kitchen together. "I'm sure glad one of us feels that way.
”
”
Jennifer Shirk (Wedding Date for Hire (Anyone But You, #2))
“
Time to dance with the devil....
”
”
Devon McKay
“
O wayfarer! Yearn finds quench, not in meadows, seashores or altitude of mountain peaks; but when being becomes dance.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
O wayfarer! Yearn finds quench, not in meadows, seashores or altitude of mountain peaks; but when being and dance are one.
”
”
Shah Asad Rizvi
“
The proliferation of substance dependency, physical abuse, sexual promiscuity, and living on the fast track in order not to feel the emptiness of one's life—all point to the loss of a vital element in life. Contemporary men and women, unlike Urbaal of ancient times, no longer have the opportunity to hold tenderly the little image of the goddess or become awe-inspired while viewing the sacred prostitute dancing in the temple, her beautiful body the representation of joy and passion. Without benefit of direct experience, we can know of the sacred prostitute only through reading deciphered cuneiform tablets or ancient manuscripts describing her rituals. The archetype, as a psychic entity, is surrounded by energy which has the ability to activate and transform conscious contents. When the archetype is constellated, that is, activated, the release of that specific energy is recognized by consciousness and felt in the body through the emotions. Thus, for example, when the archetype of the goddess of love is constellated, we are imbued with the vitality of love, beauty, sexual passion and spiritual renewal. Jung writes that the loss of an archetype gives rise to that frightful 'discontent in our culture'. Instead of digging deep in the earth to recover hidden treasures, I would "dig" in the dark, mysterious spaces of the unconscious to bring those dormant images to the light of consciousness.
”
”
Nancy Qualls-Corbett (The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine (Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts, 32))
“
Learn Best Zumba Fitness, Aerobics classes, Hip Hop, Western Dance, Contemporary, Lyrical, Salsa, Party, Bollywood, Bhangra Dance academy for kids in Mohali.
”
”
Dansation Studio
“
Naples, however, did not need buskers: the cacophony of frenzied traffic made its own music with melodic beeping of horns in a repertoire of rhythms and beats reflecting drivers’ moods. Stravinsky might have composed the music as a choreographer might have choreographed the vehicles’ dances – zigzagging, twisting, turning, stopping and starting.
”
”
Juliet Ayres (A Glimmer Through the Breach)
“
All new relationships start out with a bit of a dance before they become real.
”
”
Tammy L. Gray (Love and the Dream Come True (State of Grace, #3))
“
What kind of styles?
There are circle dances inspired by Salsa, and others inspired by contemporary dance type moves, reggae, classical music and jazz. Everything can come under this umbrella, all with the idea that this is a social dance. We don't have to perform and we don't have to be perfect. We’re doing it for the way that we feel when dancing, the togetherness and connection.
”
”
Stefan Freedman (Dance Wise)
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She had been chasing after a dancing flame at her fingertips, one that changed shapes as it drew her.
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E.C. Colton (Shards of Sky)
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Dance can transcend logical, time-bound, and place-specific limitations.
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Donna Goddard (Dance: A Spiritual Affair (The Creative Spirit Series, #1))
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Dance has the power to create happy moments—timeless moments when all is forgotten except the dance. The endless complaints and struggles are erased by being present in the calmness and unity. It is a spiritual experience because it is unifying, healing, happifying, and uplifting.
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Donna Goddard (Dance: A Spiritual Affair (The Creative Spirit Series, #1))
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If you believe that the show you’re
making will improve the world, there’s nothing saying that your goals and
self-interests and someone else’s goals and interests have to be mutually
exclusive. They can align.
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Eric Bates (The Contemporary Circus Handbook: A Guide to Creating, Funding, Producing, Organizing, and Touring Shows for the 21st Century)
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What’s your favorite part of the trip?”
“I don’t have one.”
“C’mon, there must’ve been something.”
“I took a weekend trip to Caño Cristales. I liked seeing the different colors of the river. It was like a liquid rainbow.” Many of the students had spent their time traveling around Colombia on the weekends. No one had a car, but we could hop on a plane for fairly cheap and fly into different areas such as Bogotá, the country’s official capital city, or Cali, the salsa-dancing capital of the world. Amanda had even convinced me to fly with her to the seductive, sizzling city of Cartagena. We climbed the fortified walls that had once protected the city from pirate attacks and watched the sunset. The entire city had a Miami-style skyline and, after the sun went down, infatuation seemed to bloom into fever and take hold of the city. At night we could hear the clink of rum bottles and mojito glasses in cafés on almost every street as moonlight picked out the silhouettes of softly swaying couples. We walked for hours along the coastal city streets. Candle flames beckoned from the dimness of nearby baroque churches.
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Kayla Cunningham
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Dreaming is easy, hammering out concrete details is hard.
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Eric Bates (The Contemporary Circus Handbook: A Guide to Creating, Funding, Producing, Organizing, and Touring Shows for the 21st Century)
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Limits can be great for inspiring creative solutions.
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Eric Bates (The Contemporary Circus Handbook: A Guide to Creating, Funding, Producing, Organizing, and Touring Shows for the 21st Century)