Log24

Enter Dancing

From Daily Quotational Lattice:

The story of the day is “Dance in America,” about a dancer who has dinner with some friends.  Take note if you’re a dancer: Ariel, a bona fide dancer, deems the quotes about dancing to be “very powerful.”

“I tell them dance begins when a moment of hurt combines with a moment of boredom.  I tell them it’s the body’s reaching, bringing air to itself.  I tell them that it’s the heart’s triumph, the victory speech of the feet, the refinement of animal lunge and flight, the purest metaphor of tribe and self. It’s life flipping death the bird.  I make this stuff up.”

“I am thinking of the dancing body’s magnificent and ostentatious scorn.  This is how we offer ourselves, enter heaven, enter speaking: we say with motion, in space, This is what life’s done so far down here; this is all and what and everything it’s managed–this body, these bodies, that body– so what do you think, Heaven?  What do you fucking think?”

— “Dance in America,” by Lorrie Moore