dance

Poem for Liu Ya-tzu Night is long. And slowly comes the crimson sun-moon dawn. Demons and monsters danced about and whirled for hundreds of years and five hundred millions were not a family. Yet in one song the cock whitens the world. Song pours on us from ten thousand corners and musicians from Khotan play. Never before were we poets so moved. October 1950

Snow The scene is the north lands. Thousands of li sealed in ice, en thousand li in blowing snow. From the Long Wall I gaze inside and beyond and see only vast tundra. Up and down the Yellow River the gurgling water is frozen. Mountains dance like silver snakes, hills gallop like wax bright elephants trying to climb over the sky. On days of sunlight the planet teases us in her white dress and rouge.

One day when I was young, and walking with a friend, a field dry as straw bloomed with flowers. "Oh, glory!" we breathed, my good friend and I, for the flowers blazed like suns and fire and rainbows. They sprang from folds between hillsides, peeked from pockets of shade. Spiraling - dancing - they followed us home. . . .

But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell! Did ye not hear it?-No! 't was but the wind, Or the car rattling o'er the stony street. On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

Have a good time, make life cheerful and bright, dance if you want to, sing if you can, play as long as you live and leave the world with a smile

There are three layers to the universe. In the lower, Tai Ching, and the middle, Shan Ching, the hindrance of a physical bodily existence is required. Those who fail to live consistently in accord with the Tao reside here. In the upper, Yu Ching, there is only Tao: the bondage of form is broken, and the only thing existing is the exquisite energy dance of the immortal divine beings.

If you dance, you dance because you have to. Every dancer hurts, you know.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not of one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

When an actor is in the moment, he or she is engaged in listening for the next right thing creatively. When a painter is painting, he or she may begin with a plan, but that plan is soon surrendered to the painting's own plan. This is often expressed as 'The brush takes the next stroke.' In dance, in composition, in sculpture, the experience is the same: we are more the conduit than the creator of what we express

The concept of number is the obvious distinction between the beast and man. Thanks to number, the cry becomes a song, noise acquires rhythm, the spring is transformed into a dance, force becomes dynamic, and outlines figures.