2021
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"Dance writers provide a unique
service to the field, generating the first draft of an essential
history. It seems wildly counterproductive for producers to hamstring
potential reviewers with lists of conditions and expectations. If such
policies are closely followed, if dance artists turn on the critics who
take the trouble to notice them and journalism migrates online where
photos are primary and critics usually unpaid and unedited, artists will
have an even harder time trying to connect with audiences. They will
wind up alone in the dark, surrounded by empty chairs, talking to
themselves."
- Elizabeth Zimmer
(‘Mourning my profession’ by Elizabeth Zimmer, The Village Voice, Oct 29, 2021)
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"I have always thought that the
arts do not exist in a vacuum. Great art responds to the pulse of the
now, the breath of the now, whether it is classical, contemporary or
popular."
- Aditi Mangaldas
('Aditi Mangaldas: COVID has forced us to re-skill ourselves' by Shveta Arora, Sept 28, 2021, narthaki.com)
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"Arts and Culture are the rich
soil that fertilise the inner landscape of our minds. The presence of
Arts and Culture nourishes the plants in the garden of our conscious and
unconscious mind."
- Ramli Ibrahim
('Arts and culture as nourishment for life,' TheVibes.com, Aug 27, 2021)
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"Appreciating art that other people have created connects us with one
another, and I think that one of the fundamental joys and purposes for
which we’re here, is to be connected with one another."
- Sarah Kaufman
('Celebrating grace, dance, and movement in the political now: A
conversation with Pulitzer-Prize winning critic Sarah Kaufman' by Emmy
M. Cho, Harvard Political Review, Aug 11, 2021)
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"Music is thought made audible. Dance is thought made visible."
- Alonzo King
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"Unlike the world of digital
technology on which we now binge, Arts and Culture are not about
consumption of information. It is about transformation. Unlike in the
world of Artificial Intelligence or AI, Art invites you to ponder the
nature of the Authentic instead of the Artificial. So, just as we are
taught to nourish our physical, we must also be taught to nourish our
souls. And this is possible through the inculcation of positive,
universal values in our education system."
- Ramli Ibrahim
('Arts and culture as nourishment for life,' TheVibes.com, Aug 27, 2021)
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"Art leads to beauty, beauty leads to the female energy and motherhood,
ultimately it all leads to God. And God is neither male nor female."
- Narthaki Nataraj
('The tough truth of being a male dancer' by Madhur Gupta, Hindustan Times, June 13, 2021)
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"The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word."
- Mata Hari
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"Master technique and then forget about it and be natural."
- Anna Pavlova
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"Artists have figured out ways to
put their work online: Zoom concerts, Zoom plays, Zoom stand-up sets,
Zoom choreography, Zoom book talks, Zoom gallery shows. But by and large
they haven't figured out how to make money from it. Because the one
thing we won't do for the art that we enjoy online is pay for it. This
is in part because of expectations that were established early on in the
pandemic. Musicians, especially famous ones, jumped online to do free
shows - for morale, for the novelty factor, for attention - and that set the
going price at zero. The same went for classes, webinars, and talks.
But mostly, people aren't paying for content now because they weren't
paying for it before. More content, different content, even better
content: none of that was going to change our habits."
('Stages of Grief' by William Deresiewicz, Harper's Magazine)
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"Listening to my heart beating and observing raindrops falling to the
ground is dance. Seeing people walk to the sound of traffic is dance.
Understanding someone else's perspective is dance. Dance for me has now
become life itself."
- Aakash Odedra
('Dance is a way of looking within and observing the world' by Akash Odedra, The Dance Magazine, March 4, 2021)
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"Dancing is a beautiful way to say thank you to your body and join the human race."
- Twyla Tharp
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"I see dance as a visual, tactile,
and sensual language, structured with a specific vocabulary and idiom,
within an organic bind of space/time principles and, most importantly,
related to the dynamics of energy and flow with a capacity to recharge
human beings."
- Chandralekha
('I believe dance is a 'Project' to enable a recovery of the body, of our spine,' Thewire.in, Dec 30, 2020)
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"It's not easy in the digital era
to get a full house for live shows, to keep the curtains up. Performers
have to think of ways to make their art more appealing to the real
world."
- Eddie Nixon
('A Place of his own' by Chitra Swaminathan, The Hindu Friday Review, Sept 23, 2016)
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"Dance choreography is like
composing music. Any artist that exactly knows what is going to happen
on the stage is not creating much."
- Astad Deboo
('Dance like Astad' by Ramu Ramanathan, Indian Express, Dec 14, 2020)
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"The coronavirus has interrupted and upended the performing arts, but
it's also made something clear about dance: It isn't beholden to a
proscenium stage. Its visibility, through TikTok, Instagram, YouTube
and, yes, even people on the street, has been undeniable, even with
theaters shut down. Dancers are still performing and choreographers are
still creating, be it for a premiere on video, a reinvention of a
classic or a combination of the two. While there's no denying that this
is an incredibly difficult time for dance and dance artists, it's also
been a privilege to witness such imagination and resilience."
- Gia Kourlas
('Best Dance of 2020' by Gia Kourlas, Brian Seibert and Siobhan Burke, The New York Times, Dec 1, 2020)
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