Dana Tai Soon Burgess famous quotes

A young choreographer often gets hung up on thinking they have to have all the answers. As a choreographer ages, they realize that they're more of a steward to movement. We mold movement and curate and form it into plausible and understandable stories.
-- Dana Tai Soon Burgess

#Thinking #Age #Realizing

As a child I always loved traditional Korean masked dances. There is something magical about a mask because we all wear or hide behind a metaphoric mask, and ultimately underneath this metaphor is our true vulnerable core. I think we all want to reveal ourselves but can only do so when we feel we are safe.
-- Dana Tai Soon Burgess

#Children #Thinking #Korean

A dance feels finished to me when I suddenly see this moment in the movement that feels like closure and makes me want to cry. And then I'll realize, "Oh, that's the end. This whole thing is working because it all led up to this moment." It pulls all this together and it sends the correct message in a very poetic way.
-- Dana Tai Soon Burgess

#Together #Poetic #Realizing

I think one of the biggest limitations for an artist is not being able to dream a golden dream. We're always saying, "Oh, we can make do with this," or "We can problem-solve this." But John Neumeier's creative process was very different from piecemealing. It was the first time I understood I could build something larger and that it could be and should be supported.
-- Dana Tai Soon Burgess

#Dream #Artist #Thinking

I don't understand choreographers who say they don't care about the audience or that they would be happy to present their works non-publicly. I think dance is a form of communication and the goal is to dialogue with the audience. If an audience member tells me they cried or that the dance moved them to think about their own journey or a family member's, then the work is successful.
-- Dana Tai Soon Burgess

#Communication #Successful #Journey

All people share the same desire to be treated equally. We all go through similar emotional journeys from love to hate, rejection to acceptance. I think the most important thing for dance right now is to allow for more empathy and understanding between people of different races and socioeconomic statuses. In our society we need to build bridges.
-- Dana Tai Soon Burgess

#Hate #Acceptance #Journey

From person's movement patterns I can tell a lot of things: if pain is in the body, whether someone is depressed, what age they are. When you see someone whose chest is withdrawn, their deltoids are rolled forward. That's someone whose history has broken them, in a sense. You can recognize that movement of pulling away and protecting the heart across all cultures.
-- Dana Tai Soon Burgess

#Pain #Heart #Broken

The interesting adults are always the school failures, the weird ones, the losers, the malcontents, this isn’t wishful thinking. It’s the rule.

Like most parents, I've been stumped by homework, the big questions, such as: 'What is the point of geography - the pilot always knows where we are going?'. Answer: 'If you didn't know any geography, people would think you were an American, and you wouldn't be able to put them right because you wouldn't know where they live.'

Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.

My goal has been to encourage jointness, to push people to think of affiliations rather than to operate as solo entrepreneurs.

I think I feel rather differently about sympathy to what seems the normal view. I like just to feel it is there, but not always expressed.

Indo-European peoples and Semitic peoples are today still completely different... Jews almost everywhere form a special society... Muslims (the Semitic spirit is today represented mainly by Islam) and the Europeans stand face to face like two beings of different species, having nothing common in the way of thinking and feeling...

[What she told herself before interviews:] I am the way I am; I look the way I look; I am my age.

In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.

I am super-proud to have a sort of famous character in my background that if you're a certain age, he was probably a part of your youth. I think that's pretty cool.

The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know.