Dance Attitude Quotes

Dance. Smile. Giggle. Marvel. TRUST. HOPE. LOVE. WISH. BELIEVE. Most of all, enjoy every moment of the journey, and appreciate where you are at this moment instead of always focusing on how far you have to go.

What is a Wanderess? Bound by no boundaries, contained by no countries, tamed by no time, she is the force of nature’s course.

Life is a dance. Mindfulness is witnessing that dance.

Beware, my body and my soul, beware above all of crossing your arms and assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of griefs is not a proscenium, and a man who wails is not a dancing bear.

A woman must prefer her liberty over a man. To be happy, she must. A man to be happy, however, must yearn for his woman more than his liberty. This is the rightful order.

It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something you can do it up to a point. If you really work at being happy you can do it up to a point. But anything more than that you can't. Anything more than that is luck.

When a Wanderess has been caged, or perched with her wings clipped, She lives like a Stoic, She lives most heroic, smiling with ruby, moistened lips once her cup of Death is welcome sipped.

I don't use a crap camera, I don't eat junk, and I'm not going to a dance where the boys are bores

When no possessions keep us, when no countries contain us, and no time detains us, man becomes a heroic wanderer, and woman, a wanderess.

Don’t push me, princess. (Zarek) Oooo. Next thing you’ll be talking like the Incredible Hulk. ‘Don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.’ You’re not scary to me, Mr. Zarek. So you can just check the attitude at the door and play nice while you’re here. (Astrid) If you want nice, baby, play with your fucking dog. When you’re ready to play with a man, then call me. (Zarek)

He was no god, just an artist; and when an artist is a man, he needs a woman to create like a god.

[He] said don't let them take you over. Walk into the room knowing you are the best. Shoulders back, chin up. Their attitudes will totally change.

Scent is such a powerful tool of attraction, that if a woman has this tool perfectly tuned, she needs no other. I will forgive her a large nose, a cleft lip, even crossed-eyes; and I’ll bathe in the jouissance of her intoxicating odour.

I just put my heart into it. That's the difference. It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something, you can do it, up to a point. If you really work at being happy, you can do it, up to a point...Anything more than that is luck.

A cell is just a room if you don't lock the door.

so far as you continue to entertain what makes you unhappy, you shall always dance to the tune of what will make you unhappy. A mindset change can cause a great change.

Joie de vivre is an attitude. It's a decision you make to live a life of joy. It's an invitation to this dance called life. All you have to do is leave the door slightly ajar and listen for the music.

Her attitude towards sex is very comforting to those of her friends who get into terrible states of passion and jealousy, and feel cut loose from their moorings. She seems to regard sex as a wholesome, slightly silly indulgence, like dancing and nice dinners--something that shouldn't interfere with people's being kind and cheerful to each other.

Appalling numbers of youth have been led into a cynical ultra-sophisticated attitude which regards drinking as a badge of social aptitude, which makes a fetish of sport and professes eroticism as a way of life. A perverted and insane pictorial art, lewd exhibitionistic dancing and jungle music form the spiritual norm of this sector of America's youth.

Beware of crossing your arms in the sterile attitude of the spectator, because life is not a spectacle, because a a sea of sorrows is not a proscenium, because a man who screams is not a dancing bear.

You may fall down when you dance on the edge but edge is the source of all miracles and mystery.

It takes two to Tao.

Eyes closed, feet dancing their way toward the pond, she was her own music, her body her favorite thing she'd ever owned.

Let those who can sing to sing on top of their voices and those who dance to dance to their very best rhythm.

faith is when music stops but you continue dancing.

I have been the patient one. I have waited for the world to stop being silly. I have waited for it to stop wars. I have waited for politicians to be honest. I have waited for real estate men to be good citizens. But while I wait, I dance!

The sound of music, makes me dance.

I was relieved to find her attitude to myself suggested nothing more hostile than complete indifference.

Some people dance with singing rain; some people get wet with misery and pain.

I’d loved women who were old and who were young; those extra kilos and large rumps, and others so thin there was barely even skin to pinch, and every time I held them, I worried I would snap them in two. But for all of these: where they had merited my love was in their delicious smell. Scent is such a powerful tool of attraction, that if a woman has this tool perfectly tuned, she needs no other. I will forgive her a large nose, a cleft lip, even crossed-eyes; and I’ll bathe in the jouissance of her intoxicating odour.

On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze. A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that? Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind. In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday. Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us. It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral. All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being.

For some reason, the sight of snow descending on fire always makes me think of the ancient world – legionaries in sheepskin warming themselves at a brazier: mountain altars where offerings glow between wintry pillars; centaurs with torches cantering beside a frozen sea – scattered, unco-ordinated shapes from a fabulous past, infinitely removed from life; and yet bringing with them memories of things real and imagined. These classical projections, and something in the physical attitudes of the men themselves as they turned from the fire, suddenly suggested Poussin’s scene in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outwards like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seeminly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.

I am more than the moments that locked my essence in trauma. Using every ounce of pain, never forgetting my worth, moving away from the drama.

The fact is, life rains on you. How sad you haven’t learned to dance in the downpour.

There was a time when I was alone because I felt rejected. And then I fell in love with alone. But once I danced, I fell in love with the movement of life.

What you think of yourself in your mind is nobody's business. Make it count.

I totally believe in my work and when I have something so good with me , I can't let it just sit with me. it shall dance,sing , fly and connect hearts ,so I write....

Feeling unable to maintain this detachment of attitude towards human- and, in especial, matrimonial- affairs, I asked whether it was not true that she had married Bob Duport. She nodded; not exactly conveying, it seemed to me, that by some happy chance their union had introduced her to an unexpected terrestrial paradise.

water pacifies the mind, the spirit, and the body...it soothes us, cleans us, refreshes us...we need it to survive, and there is something so calming and beautiful in the entrancing dance of water as it falls down a cascade, it is pure falling peace for our soul

Cultivate an attitude of persistence that will allow you to become stronger.

We go from most doubted to most respected with the right outlook and attitude to life.

His physical attitude suggested a holy man doing penance vicariously for the sin of those in his spiritual care.

My best advice for you is; work while others are walking, pray while others are playing and dance while others are standing

Ballet shoes... I cannot play with them like they're toys. But when the music is playing they get deep on my toes.

Avoid being brainwashed or controlled by the opinions or attitudes of others.

What if we lean in to life even with the messes and the mysteries to find the magic in it all?

Agnes shut her eyes, clenched her fists, opened her mouth and screamed. It started low. Plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling. The prisms on the chandelier chimed gently as they shook. It rose, passing quickly through the mysterious pitch at fourteen cycles per second where the human spirit begins to feel distinctly uncomfortable about the universe and the place in it of the bowels. Small items around the Opera House vibrated off shelves and smashed on the floor. The note climbed, rang like a bell, climbed again. In the Pit, all the violin strings snapped, one by one. As the tone rose, the crystal prisms shook in the chandelier. In the bar, champagne corks fired a salvo. Ice jingled and shattered in its bucket. A line of wine-glasses joined in the chorus, blurred around the rims, and then exploded like hazardous thistledown with attitude. There were harmonics and echoes that caused strange effects. In the dressing-rooms the No. 3 greasepaint melted. Mirrors cracked, filling the ballet school with a million fractured images. Dust rose, insects fell. In the stones of the Opera House tiny particles of quartz danced briefly... Then there was silence, broken by the occasional thud and tinkle. Nanny grinned. 'Ah,' she said, 'now the opera's over.

If you are a musician, sing to one as if you were singing to a million. If you are a dancer, dance to one as if you were dancing to a million. If you are a performer, perform to one as if you were performing to a million.

today, this attitude—condemn more, understand less—has become the default response of almost everyone, from the right to the left, as we spend our lives dancing to the tune of algorithms that reward fury and penalize mercy.

A truly enlightened attitude to language should simply be to let six thousand or more flowers bloom. Subcultures should be allowed to thrive, not just because it is wrong to squash them, because they enrich the wider culture. Just as Black English has left its mark on standard English Culture, South Africans take pride in the marks of Afrikaans and African languages on their vocabulary and syntax. New Zealand's rugby team chants in Maori, dancing a traditional dance, before matches. French kids flirt with rebellion by using verlan, a slang that reverses words' sounds or syllables (so femmes becomes meuf). Argentines glory in lunfardo, an argot developed from the underworld a centyry ago that makes Argentine Spanish unique still today. The nonstandard greeting "Where y'at?" for "How are you?" is so common among certain whites in New Orleans that they bear their difference with pride, calling themselves Yats. And that's how it should be.

Sometimes it is the other way around. A white person is set down in our midst, but the contrast is just as sharp for me. For instance, when I sit in the drafty basement that is The New World Cabaret with a white person, my color comes. We enter chatting about any little nothing that we have in common and are seated by the jazz waiters. In the abrupt way that jazz orchestras have, this one plunges into a number. It loses no time in circumlocutions, but gets right down to business. It constricts the thorax and splits the heart with its tempo and narcotic harmonies. This orchestra grows rambunctious, rears on its hind legs and attacks the tonal veil with primitive fury, rending it, clawing it until it breaks through to the jungle beyond. I follow those heathen--follow them exultingly. I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I shake my assegai above my head, I hurl it true to the mark yeeeeooww! I am in the jungle and living in the jungle way. My face is painted red and yellow and my body is painted blue. My pulse is throbbing like a war drum. I want to slaughter something--give pain, give death to what, I do not know. But the piece ends. The men of the orchestra wipe their lips and rest their fingers. I creep back slowly to the veneer we call civilization with the last tone and find the white friend sitting motionless in his seat, smoking calmly. "Good music they have here," he remarks, drumming the table with his fingertips. Music. The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him. He has only heard what I felt. He is far away and I see him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us. He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored.

we’ve accepted the widespread attitudes and effects of patriarchy as givens. They are so much a part of the world, we start to think that’s just the way reality is. In the play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, a deceptively wise

All I had left were her ashes and her clothes. I tried them all on locked in her bedroom. She had followed her own mother’s footsteps. I danced laughing crazy and then crying quietly. I didn’t know whether to be angry or grateful or afraid. Angry because her actions seemed selfish, grateful that her pain had ended, or afraid it was written in our history. Angry that I didn’t stop her, instead enabled her, grateful because I had known her, loved her, or afraid I could put someone else through that pain. I’ve lived and learned now knowing that I’m strong and history does not have to repeat itself. My unclothed heart and soul are here for as long as our universe gives me the privilege. All I do know is we never really know what anyone is thinking or committed to, but we do know the clothes they wear.

...I came face to face with a system of social governance, a vast complex of patterns and attitudes within culture, religion, and family. The name of the system is patriarchy. It's important to empathize that patriarchy is neither men nor the masculine principle; it is rather a system in which that principle has become distorted. The word patriarchy comes from the Greek would pater, which means father, and archein, which means rule. It has come to mean a way of social organization marked by the authority or supremacy of men and fathers.

Loss, be it the death of a loved one, deteriorating health, lost dreams, or some kind of divine interruption . . . will usually include a measure of pain.  Your positive attitude, perspective change, and faith are what will turn your wailing into praise and joyful dancing.

I hold space for people who sin differently from me. I'm not, like, "My sins are better than yours", or, "My sins are more acceptable than your sins." It's ridiculous how we favour our own sins while we all dance with different demons. We are afraid of another's demons when we ourselves have our own. So, I hold space in me for those who sin differently from me, because it is those imperfections in their own stories which have painted them the colours that are their own. The same way I have been painted in my colours, they have been painted in theirs.

The Cretans’ more natural attitudes toward sex would also have had other consequences equally difficult to perceive under the prevailing paradigm, wherein religious dogma often views sex as more sinful than violence. As Hawkes writes, “The Cretans seem to have reduced and diverted their aggressiveness through a free and well-balanced sexual life.”33 Along with their enthusiasm for sports and dancing and their creativity and love of life, these liberated attitudes toward sex seem to have contributed to the generally peaceful and harmonious spirit predominant in Cretan life.

This is the way it ought to be, he thought to himself, to be able to dance with a girl you like and really get a kick out of it because everything’ on an even keel and one’s worries are of the usual ones of unpaid bills and sickness in the family and being late to work too often. Wh can’t it be that way for me? Nobody’s looking twice at us. Nobody’s asking me where I was during the war or what the hell I am doing back on the coast. There’s no trouble to be had without looking for it. Everything’s the same, just as it used to be. No bad feelings except for those that have always been and probably always will. It’s a matter of attitude. Mine needs changing. I’ve got to love the world the way I used to. I’ve got to love it and the people so I’ll feel good, and feeling good will make life worthwhile. There’s no point in crying about what’s done. There’s a place for me and Emi and Freddie here on the dance floor and out there in the hustle of things if we’ll let it be that way. I’ve been fighting it and hating it and letting my bitterness against myself and Ma and Pa and even Taro throw the whole universe out of perspective. I want only to go on living and be happy. I’ve only to let myself do so.

The practice of magic also demands the development of what is called the magical will. Will is very much akin to what Victorian schoolmasters called "character": honesty, self-discipline, commitment, and conviction. Those who would practice magic must be scrupulously honest in their personal lives. In one sense, magic works on the principle that "it is so because I say it is so." A bag of herbs acquires the power to heal because I say it does. For my word to take on such force, I must be deeply and completely convinced that it is identified with truth as I know it. If I habitually lie to my lovers, steal from my boss, pilfer from supermarkets, or simply renege on my promises, I cannot have that conviction. Unless I have enough personal power to keep commitments in my daily life, I will be unable to wield magical power. To work magic, I need a basic belief in my ability to do things and cause things to happen. That belief is generated and sustained by my daily actions. If I say I will finish a report by Thursday and I do so, I have strengthened my knowledge that I am a person who can do what I say I will do. If I let the report go until a week from next Monday, I have undermined that belief. If course, life is full of mistakes and miscalculations. But to a person who practices honesty and keeps commitments, "As I will, so mote it be" is not just a pretty phrase; it is a statement of fact.

After thirty minutes of learning and rehearsing this routine, I've decided to never show my aforementioned self-taught moves to the public. Today's dance style seems to involve a dash of bump and a cup of grind, with a heavy dose of attitude...ingredients I haven't incorporated before. Not having cable television can really keep a girl out of the loop.

If the writer is a socially privileged person - particularly a White or a male or both - his imagination may have to make an intense and conscious effort to realize that people who don't share his privileged status may read his work and will not share with him many attitudes and opinions that he has been allowed to believe or to pretend are shared by "everybody.

While holding onto the awareness, then, that we must not fall into shaping our identity as victims, we have to tell ourselves the "flat-out truth," as my grandmother used to call it. And the flat-out truth is that we have come into a world, into a church or faith tradition, that for millennia has believed us inferior. It is a tradition permeated by an authoritarian attitude that devalues, diminishes, rejects, and limits women and the feminine. But seeing truth can be dangerous. Philosopher Mary Daly reminds us, "It isn't prudent for women to see all of this. Seeing means that everything changes: the old identifications and the old securities are gone." The question, she says, is whether women can forgo prudence in favor of courage.

These classical projections, and something in the physical attitudes of the men themselves as they turned from the fire, suddenly suggested Poussin’s scene in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.

- Cucini bene, tu, - disse Yuki ammirata. - Non sono un grande cuoco, ma cucino con amore e attenzione. E' questo che fa la differenza. E' una questione di atteggiamento. Se si fanno le cose mettendoci amore, quell'amore ti ritorna. Se hai un atteggiamento positivo verso la vita, la tua vita sarà più piacevole. - Di più non si può? - Di più non possiamo. Poi entra in gioco la fortuna, - dissi.

Understanding Place In my view, place is space known through direct experience in the body, involving sensation, thought, memory, and imagination. Place exists both outside the human body and inside that marvelous membrane we call skin. Relationship to place is a process of assimilation—it takes time. It is through our interaction with specific landscapes and buildings that our movement patterns, perceptual habits, and attitudes have been formed. Architect Yi-Fu Tuan describes it this way in Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience: “Place is security, space is freedom. We are attached to the one and long for the other. […] What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value.”1 As dancers, we hold both place and space in our awareness as we work, rooting us in the moment and opening us to unseen dimensions.

In 1917 I went to Russia. I was sent to prevent the Bolshevik Revolution and to keep Russia in the war. The reader will know that my efforts did not meet with success. I went to Petrograd from Vladivostok, .One day, on the way through Siberia, the train stopped at some station and the passengers as usual got out, some to fetch water to make tea, some to buy food and others to stretch their legs. A blind soldier was sitting on a bench. Other soldiers sat beside him and more stood behind. There were from twenty to thirty.Their uniforms were torn and stained. The blind soldier, a big vigorous fellow, was quite young. On his cheeks was the soft, pale down of a beard that has never been shaved. I daresay he wasn't eighteen. He had a broad face, with flat, wide features, and on his forehead was a great scar of the wound that had lost him his sight. His closed eyes gave him a strangely vacant look. He began to sing. His voice was strong and sweet. He accompanied himself on an accordion. The train waited and he sang song after song. I could not understand his words, but through his singing, wild and melancholy, I seemed to hear the cry of the oppressed: I felt the lonely steppes and the interminable forests, the flow of the broad Russian rivers and all the toil of the countryside, the ploughing of the land and the reaping of the wild corn, the sighing of the wind in the birch trees, the long months of dark winter; and then the dancing of the women in the villages and the youths bathing in shallow streams on summer evenings; I felt the horror of war, the bitter nights in the trenches, the long marches on muddy roads, the battlefield with its terror and anguish and death. It was horrible and deeply moving. A cap lay at the singer's feet and the passengers filled it full of money; the same emotion had seized them all, of boundless compassion and of vague horror, for there was something in that blind, scarred face that was terrifying; you felt that this was a being apart, sundered from the joy of this enchanting world. He did not seem quite human. The soldiers stood silent and hostile. Their attitude seemed to claim as a right the alms of the travelling herd. There was a disdainful anger on their side and unmeasurable pity on ours; but no glimmering of a sense that there was but one way to compensate that helpless man for all his pain.

Halia looked at the sky and watched the stars dancing to the song of the wind and rain. A spotlight of lightning always came before the chorus of thunder. She wondered if there were anyone else like her, sitting at their window and listening to the choir of dark, grey clouds. When time paused for as long as the rain fell, when the city of lights was blacked out, and Ameral Alley was quiet, dark, and wild, and all but a city of tall buildings and people working their lives away. But then she’d realised… maybe she just saw magic in times when others saw nothing.

Suppose someone wanting to learn to dance said: 'For hundreds of years now one generation after another has been learning dance steps, it's high time I took advantage of this and began straight off with a set of quadrilles.' One would surely laugh a little at him: but in the world of spirit such an attitude is considered utterly plausible. What then is education? I had thought it was the curriculum the individual ran through in order to catch up with himself; and anyone who does not want to go through this curriculum will be little helped by being born into the most enlightened age.

Ask Mrs. Pontellier what she would like to hear me play,” she requested of Robert. She sat perfectly still before the piano, not touching the keys, while Robert carried her message to Edna at the window. A general air of surprise and genuine satisfaction fell upon every one as they saw the pianist enter. There was a settling down, and a prevailing air of expectancy everywhere. Edna was a trifle embarrassed at being thus signaled out for the imperious little woman’s favor. She would not dare to choose, and begged that Mademoiselle Reisz would please herself in her selections. Edna was what she herself called very fond of music. Musical strains, well rendered, had a way of evoking pictures in her mind. She sometimes liked to sit in the room of mornings when Madame Ratignolle played or practiced. One piece which that lady played Edna had entitled “Solitude.” It was a short, plaintive, minor strain. The name of the piece was something else, but she called it “Solitude.” When she heard it there came before her imagination the figure of a man standing beside a desolate rock on the seashore. He was naked. His attitude was one of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight away from him. Another piece called to her mind a dainty young woman clad in an Empire gown, taking mincing dancing steps as she came down a long avenue between tall hedges. Again, another reminded her of children at play, and still another of nothing on earth but a demure lady stroking a cat. The very first chords which Mademoiselle Reisz struck upon the piano sent a keen tremor down Mrs. Pontellier’s spinal column. It was not the first time she had heard an artist at the piano. Perhaps it was the first time she was ready, perhaps the first time her being was tempered to take an impress of the abiding truth.

Never play the princess when you can be the queen: rule the kingdom, swing a scepter, wear a crown of gold. Don’t dance in glass slippers, crystal carving up your toes -- be a barefoot Amazon instead, for those shoes will surely shatter on your feet. Never wear only pink when you can strut in crimson red, sweat in heather grey, and shimmer in sky blue, claim the golden sun upon your hair. Colors are for everyone, boys and girls, men and women -- be a verdant garden, the landscape of Versailles, not a pale primrose blindly pushed aside. Chase green dragons and one-eyed zombies, fierce and fiery toothy monsters, not merely lazy butterflies, sweet and slow on summer days. For you can tame the most brutish beasts with your wily wits and charm, and lizard scales feel just as smooth as gossamer insect wings. Tramp muddy through the house in a purple tutu and cowboy boots. Have a tea party in your overalls. Build a fort of birch branches, a zoo of Legos, a rocketship of Queen Anne chairs and coverlets, first stop on the moon. Dream of dinosaurs and baby dolls, bold brontosaurus and bookish Belle, not Barbie on the runway or Disney damsels in distress -- you are much too strong to play the simpering waif. Don a baseball cap, dance with Daddy, paint your toenails, climb a cottonwood. Learn to speak with both your mind and heart. For the ground beneath will hold you, dear -- know that you are free. And never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.

People can be, like, "you're not really that important for me to stay." And they expect me to say things like, "I can show you how important I am, more than the others", thus expecting this whole dance-of-the-human to ensue. Listen, I don't do dance-of-the-human. I am here in this place where moonlight is the only light and I don't need to be the Sun. The Moon is okay. And some people prefer the Sun, and that's okay too. I have cozy things where I am: quietness and a cat. And big windows and tea. I can let people like other things that are not me. I'm not going to be doing that dance with you. If you want to stay with me, it's going to be because you want to be near me and if you don't want to be near me then that means you want to be near someone or something else. That's okay. I don't have to be everything. I only have to be me.

You create your reality. Corky reinforced this idea for me. He believes that even when you’re not feeling on top of your game, you need to tell yourself that you are and put that image out there. It’s like shifting a gear from off to on. If you are not feeling happy or driven, then make an effort to radiate a sense of confidence. If you’re mortified that you screwed up a dance, pretend you’re proud and unfazed. It’s not self-deception; it’s creating your own reality. Put it out there in the universe and watch what happens. You begin to realize who you are is what you believe you are. Your personal perception of reality is determined by how you think and feel. Your thoughts and feelings create your attitude, and your attitude dictates how you act. We all have an incredible power at our disposal: the power to become what we think about. Visualize what you want. See it, own it, be it.

There’s my girl,” he said. “On her feet already. You’ll be a military officer in no time with an attitude like that.” Kestrel sat. She gave him a slight, ironic smile. He returned it. “What I meant to say is that I’m glad you’re better, and that I’m sorry I can’t go to the Firstwinter ball.” It was good that she was already sitting. “Why would you want to go to a ball?” “I thought I would take you.” She stared. “It occurred to me that I have never danced with my daughter,” he said. “And it would have been a wise move.” A wise move. A show of force, then. A reminder of the respect due to the general’s family. Quietly, Kestrel said, “You’ve heard the rumors.” He raised a hand, palm flat and facing her. “Father--” “Stop.” “It’s not true. I--” “We will not have this discussion.” His hand lifted to block his eyes, then fell. “Kestrel, I’m not here for that. I’m here to tell you that I’m leaving. The emperor is sending me east to fight the barbarians.” It wasn’t the first time in Kestrel’s memory that her father had been sent to war, but the fear she felt was always the same, always keen. “For how long?” “As long as it takes. I leave the morning of the ball with my regiment.” “The entire regiment?” He caught the tone in her voice. He sighed. “Yes.” “That means there will be no soldiers in the city or its surroundings. If there’s a problem--” “The city guard will be here. The emperor feels they can deal with any problem, at least until a force arrives from the capital.” “Then the emperor is a fool. The captain of the city guard isn’t up to the task. You yourself said that the new captain is nothing but a bungler, someone who got the position because he’s the governor’s toady--” “Kestrel.” His voice was quelling. “I’ve already expressed my reservations to the emperor. But he gave me orders. It’s my duty to follow them.” Kestrel studied her fingers, the way they wove together. She didn’t say Come back safely, and he didn’t say I always have. She said what a Valorian should. “Fight well.” “I will.” He was halfway to the door when he glanced back and said, “I’m trusting you to do what’s right while I’m gone.” Which meant that he didn’t trust her--not quite.

Almost immediately after jazz musicians arrived in Paris, they began to gather in two of the city’s most important creative neighborhoods: Montmartre and Montparnasse, respectively the Right and Left Bank haunts of artists, intellectuals, poets, and musicians since the late nineteenth century. Performing in these high-profile and popular entertainment districts could give an advantage to jazz musicians because Parisians and tourists already knew to go there when they wanted to spend a night out on the town. As hubs of artistic imagination and experimentation, Montmartre and Montparnasse therefore attracted the kinds of audiences that might appreciate the new and thrilling sounds of jazz. For many listeners, these locations leant the music something of their own exciting aura, and the early success of jazz in Paris probably had at least as much to do with musicians playing there as did other factors. In spite of their similarities, however, by the 1920s these neighborhoods were on two very different paths, each representing competing visions of what France could become after the war. And the reactions to jazz in each place became important markers of the difference between the two areas and visions. Montmartre was legendary as the late-nineteenth-century capital of “bohemian Paris,” where French artists had gathered and cabaret songs had filled the air. In its heyday, Montmartre was one of the centers of popular entertainment, and its artists prided themselves on flying in the face of respectable middle-class values. But by the 1920s, Montmartre represented an established artistic tradition, not the challenge to bourgeois life that it had been at the fin de siècle. Entertainment culture was rapidly changing both in substance and style in the postwar era, and a desire for new sounds, including foreign music and exotic art, was quickly replacing the love for the cabarets’ French chansons. Jazz was not entirely to blame for such changes, of course. Commercial pressures, especially the rapidly growing tourist trade, eroded the popularity of old Montmartre cabarets, which were not always able to compete with the newer music halls and dance halls. Yet jazz bore much of the criticism from those who saw the changes in Montmartre as the death of French popular entertainment. Montparnasse, on the other hand, was the face of a modern Paris. It was the international crossroads where an ever changing mixture of people celebrated, rather than lamented, cosmopolitanism and exoticism in all its forms, especially in jazz bands. These different attitudes within the entertainment districts and their institutions reflected the impact of the broader trends at work in Paris—the influx of foreign populations, for example, or the advent of cars and electricity on city streets as indicators of modern technology—and the possible consequences for French culture. Jazz was at the confluence of these trends, and it became a convenient symbol for the struggle they represented.

Then, as if he’d figured out what produced the maximum reaction in her, he switched back to Chopin. Just like that night in her childhood, the music slipped past her defenses and produced a deep contraction inside her, equal parts pain and pleasure. It went deeper still, until the tears began to rise, and she could only sit there, crying, trying to display only her expressionless left side so he wouldn’t notice. She’d been numb and it had felt good. Okay, not good. But safe. Manageable. He kept playing, soulful, stirring pieces that seemed chosen for their ability to pierce her heart deeper, deeper. She was crying audibly now, and he stopped and regarded her impassively. It couldn’t have been more awkward. She worked to compose herself and only then did she look up and meet his eyes. “Well,” he said, “I think it’s safe to say that dance is not done with you yet.” She stared at him in disbelief. “You did this on purpose. Tried to provoke a reaction.” “I suppose I did.” What a horrible, disreputable person he was. No wonder Misha had seemed anxious about having him around this weekend. “That was a pretty shitty thing to do.” “Not at all,” he replied. “I was just helping you see where you stand with your art. You need it. It nourishes you. That’s not going to go away just because you’re sidelined for a year or two.” “Two years?” She wasn’t sure which appalled her more, his words or his casual attitude. “Whatever. Point being, you’re still a dancer. It couldn’t be more obvious. That gorgeous body of yours, the way it moves. The way you’re sitting there now, all swept away by the music. You’re a dancer. You can’t not be one. Ever.” The truth of this, the twin emotions of fragile hope and crushing despair, crashed into her. He was right. And right then, the truth hurt. Now that the numbness was gone, it all hurt. The tears rose up again and spilled out. She heard Misha come in through the front door. David looked anxious. “Look, Dena. I just want to make sure you’re looking at the issue clearly.” Misha

THE PARTY And at last the police are at the front door, summoned by a neighbor because of the noise, two large cops asking Peter, who had signed the rental agreement, to end the party. Our peace can’t be disturbed, one of the officers states. But when we receive a complaint we act on it. The police on the front stoop wear as their shoulder patch an artist’s palette, since the town likes to think of itself as an art colony, and indeed, Pacific Coast Highway two blocks inland, which serves as the main north-south street, is lined with commercial galleries featuring paintings of the surf by moonlight —like this night, but without anybody on the sand and with a bigger moon. And now Dennis, as at every party once the police arrive at the door, moves through the dancers, the drinkers, the talkers, to confront the uniforms and guns, to object, he says, to their attempt to stop people harmlessly enjoying themselves, and to argue it isn’t even 1 a.m. Then Stuart, as usual, pushes his way to the discussion happening at the door and in his drunken manner tries to justify to the cops Dennis’ attitude, believing he can explain things better to authority, which of course annoys Dennis, and soon those two are disputing with each other, tonight exasperating Peter, whose sole aim is to get the officers to leave before they are provoked enough to demand to enter to check ID or something, and maybe smell the pot and somebody ends up arrested with word getting back to the landlord and having the lease or whatever Peter had signed cancelled, and all staying here evicted. The Stones, or Janis, are on the stereo now, as the police stand firm like time, like death—You have to shut it down—as the dancing inside continues, the dancers forgetting for a moment a low mark on a quiz, or their draft status, or a paper due Monday, or how to end the war in Asia, or some of their poems rejected by a magazine, or the situation in Watts or of Chavez’s farmworkers, or that they wish they had asked Erin rather than Joan to dance. That dancing, that music, the party, even after the cops leave with their warning Don’t make us come back continues, the dancing has lasted for years, decades, across a new century, through the fear of nuclear obliteration, the great fires, fierce rain, Main Beach and Forest Avenue flooded, war after war, love after love, that dancing goes on, the dancing, the party, the night, the dancing

If it´s cold and cloudy outside, And you want to be a great fella, Make all your troubles go glide Opening a smile as your umbrella.

Jesus’ attitude was humble and sacrificial. He chose to respond to His circumstances with love, patience, and gentleness.

Concerned about attitudes toward worship and practices in worship in the churches of his time, Søren Kierkegaard, a nineteenth-century Danish philosopher/theologian, compared what was taking place in the theater and what was happening in Christian worship. In a theater, actors, prompted by people offstage, perform for their audiences. To his dismay, Kierkegaard found that this theatrical model dominated the worship practices of many churches. A minister was viewed as the on-stage actor, God as the offstage prompter, and the congregation as the audience. Unfortunately, that understanding of worship remains as prevalent as it is wrong. Each ingredient of the theatrical model mentioned by Kierkegaard is an essential component in Christian worship. Crucial, though, is a proper identification of the role of each one. In authentic worship, the actor is, in fact, many actors and actresses—the members of the congregation. The prompter is the minister, if singular, or, if plural, all of the people who lead in worship (choir members, instrumentalists, soloists, readers, prayers, preachers). The audience is God. Always, without exception, the audience is God! If God is not the audience in any given service, Christian worship does not take place. If worship does occur and God is not the audience, all present participate in the sin of idolatry.3

It is an Akido style of martial art. The family disturber throws their disturbance at me like a punch, and I flow with it and its energy, while taking care of myself and my opponent. In Mindell’s work, an attitude of eldership means the elder uses dance to dance freely between the energy of the disturber and the energy of the one disturbed. In Mindell’s talk, he explains that when we get down to this level, we are in Process Mind or into the mind behind the system itself.

Dancing in the rain is better than despairing in the storm.

As for Sturridge, he comes across as quite possibly the most likable man to ever wear the Liverbird. The chicken teriyaki enthusiast has been defying expectations and unfounded prejudice since he arrived at the club to a lukewarm fan response. He was a troublemaker, you see. He had a poor attitude and was a he Big Time Charlie, don't you know? The Chelsea guys said so and Jose Mourinho has never been anything other than ethical and sincere, right? Right? "The England front man was quick to disabuse dubious fans of their misguided assumptions. From his first interview he spoke with a candour and earnest enthusiasm that were utterly endearing. His performance on the pitch has been nothing short of remarkable and his prodigious tally of 35 goals in 49 appearances to date is worthy of far more adulation than he has received. Doubtless the dancing striker has suffered by comparison with the frankly unequalled brilliance of a certain now-departed flesh gourmand, but the Birmingham native is worthy of so much more praise and, with time on his side, he has the potential to become the nonpareil of Liverpool's recent strikers.

The word 'figure' from choreography . . . means something like a momentary attitude of the body or a fragment of a dance.

Alienated from official Russia by their politics, and from peasant Russia by their education, Russia’s artists took it upon themselves to create a national community of values and ideas through literature and art. What did it mean to be a Russian? What was Russia’s place and mission in the world? And where was the true Russia? In Europe or in Asia? St Petersburg or Moscow? The Tsar’s empire or the muddy one-street village where Natasha’s ‘Uncle’ lived? These were the ‘accursed questions’ that occupied the mind of every serious writer, literary critic and historian, painter and composer, theologian and philosopher in the golden age of Russian culture from Pushkin to Pasternak. They are the questions that lie beneath the surface of the art within this book. The works discussed here represent a history of ideas and attitudes – concepts of the nation through which Russia tried to understand itself. If we look carefully, they may become a window on to a nation’s inner life.

the reader will find here that works of literature, like War and Peace, are intercut with episodes from daily life (childhood, marriage, religious life, responses to the landscape, food and drinking habits, attitudes to death) where the outlines of this national consciousness may be discerned. These are the episodes where we may find, in life, the unseen threads of a common Russian sensibility, such as Tolstoy had imagined in his celebrated dancing scene.

[John Major] believed we need 'to condemn a little more, and understand a little less.' I remember thinking then, at the age of fourteen, that this was surely wrong - that it's always better to understand why people do things, even (perhaps especially) the most heinous acts. But today, this attitude — condemn more, understand less — has become the default response of almost everyone, from the right to the left, as we spend our lives dancing to the tune of algorithms that reward fury and penalize mercy.

the re-creator; all of these in cycle. Sometimes the one who is running from the Life/Death/Life nature insists on thinking of love as a boon only. Yet love in its fullest form is a series of deaths and rebirths. We let go of one phase, one aspect of love, and enter another. Passion dies and is brought back. Pain is chased away and surfaces another time. To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many many endings, and many many beginnings—all in the same relationship. The process is complicated by the fact that much of our overcivilized culture has a difficult time tolerating the transformative. But there are better attitudes with which to embrace the Life/Death/Life nature. Throughout the world, though it is called by different names, many see this nature as un baile con La Muerte, a dance with death; Death as a dancer, with Life as its dance partner.

Life crashes like waves against the shore of my heart. Your love has become the safe harbor from which my soul can never depart

Love is the miracle that if believed in enough will surely save the world.

Recognizing there is no separation between our pain, with love and forgiveness it;s one another’s soul’s we maintain.

Accepting my quirks, eccentricities and sensitivities, using them as superpowers not disabilities.

Love is the greatest of superpowers healing mind, body and spirit. Never will I tire from expressing this so others can hear it.

Hush now my child, this is all part of the grand cycle. Death and rebirth leads to soul’s revival.

When darkness threatens to shut out the Light, ranges of emotions are the waves I surf at night. “Triumphing over Trauma” as my battle cry. Accepting this truth becomes my only guide.

Prayer then becomes an attitude that sees the world not as something to be possessed but as a gift that speaks constantly of the Giver. It leads us out of the suffering that comes from insisting on doing things our way. It opens our hearts to receive. And prayer refreshes our memory about how other people reveal to us the gift of life.

When we pray we admit that we don’t know what God is going to do, but remember that we will never find out if we are not open to risks. We learn to stretch out our arms to the deep sea and the high heavens with an open mind and heart. In many ways prayer becomes an attitude toward life that opens itself up to a gift that is always coming. We find courage to let new things happen, things over which we have no control, but which now loom as less threatening. And it is here that we find courage to face our human boundaries and hurts, whether our physical appearance, our being excluded by others, our memories of hurt or abuse, our oppression at the hands of another. As we find freedom to cry out in our anguish or protest someone’s suffering, we discover ourselves slowly led into a new place. We become conditioned to wait for what we in our own strength cannot create or orchestrate. We realize that joy is not a matter of balloons and parties, not owning a house, or even having our children succeed in school. It has to do with a deep experience— an experience of Christ. In the quiet listening of prayer, we learn to make out the voice that says, “I love you, whoever else likes you or not. You are mine. Build your home in me as I have built my home in you.

The Pygmalion and Golem Effects are woven into the fabric of our world. Every day, we make each other smarter or stupider, stronger or weaker, faster or slower. We can't help leaking expectations, through our gazes, our body language and our voices. My expectations about you define my attitude towards you, and the way I behave towards you in turn influences your expectations and therefore your behaviour towards me. If you think about it, this gets to the very crux of the human condition. *Homo puppy* is like an antenna, constantly attuned to other people. Somebody else's finger gets trapped in the door and you flinch. A tightrope walker balances on a thin cord and you feel your own stomach lurch. Someone yawns and it's almost impossible for you not to yawn as well. We're hardwired to mirror one another. Most of the time, this mirroring works well. It fosters connections and good vibes, as when everybody's grooving together on the dance floor. Our natural instinct to mirror others tends to be seen in a positive light for precisely this reason, but the instinct works two ways. We also mirror negative emotions such as hatred, envy and greed. And when we adopt one another's bad ideas - thinking them to be ideas everybody around us holds - the results can be downright disastrous.

There were a number of ways in which the homosexual dimension of these stories could be disguised or seemingly eliminated. For example, the obstacle to the heterosexual romance might be presented not as the love between the two men but as a shared attitude toward women, whether as contempt (often disguised as womanizing), distrust, or some other aversive reaction. In musicals, where double readings are nearly always possible, these kinds of “disguises” will seem either fully effective (from resolutely “straight” perspectives) or sure signs of a hidden subtext (for those inclined and equipped to read them).28 In Singin’ in the Rain, the male friendship between Don Lockwood and Cosmo Brown may well have been patterned on An American in Paris (although potential models are legion), with Donald O’Connor’s dancing adding a spirited physical dimension to the cynical, wisecracking, piano-playing sidekick of Oscar Levant in the earlier film. The homoerotic overtones are somewhat more overt in the earlier film, especially given Levant’s narcissism and insinuating delivery, which always seems to hint at unspoken meanings.

Life isn't fair and nobody owes you anything, so you better get your ass out there and throw caution and expectations to the wind, live with joy and abandon, be bad, be good, and dance as hard as you can.

We are the children of the earth. So, we play and dance with singular intelligence while we learn to discern between light and dark. And then, one day, if we play conscientiously, we might find ourselves in the library of all things where we are instructed by the sun, moon and stars to wake up and to be the marriage of light and dark – unity in shimmering silver – the mirror of the cosmos.