Merce Cunninham on Dancing
You must love the daily work.

Merce Cunningham on Dancing:

You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls.

I was looking out the window one morning and there were several children out there. They were skipping and running about playing like, little kids, and I suddenly realised they were dancing, you could call it dancing, and yet it wasn’t dancing; I thought it was marvellous. There was no music.

Joy, love, fear, anger humour, all can be “made clear” by images familiar to our eyes. And all are grand or meagre depending on the eye of the beholder. What to some is splendid entertainment to others is merely tedium and fidgets; what to some seems barren, to others is the very essence of heroic. And the art is not the better of the worse.

Clarity is the lowest form of poetry, and language. Like all else in our lives is always changing. Our emotions are constantly being propelled by some new face in the sky, some new rocket to the moon, some new sound to the ear, but they are the same emotions.

I am very busy
… and will be for the next 4 months.

I am working on two books and a commercial video for release in December.
I am training in mime and dance.
I am dealing with a broken heart.
I teach a weekly class in London.
I am preparing a dance/block manipulation piece for a major UK circus convention in a few weeks.
I am hosting several other jugglers this month who are coming to London to train.

To top it off, I have a unicycling gig in october that is paying me $5000 (canadian) and I can’t ride the damn thing yet.

I know me. It is entirely likely that I will spend the next month going out of my studio for only 2 reasons: (A) to take the boat out and buy food, or (B) to travel to a gig.

No partying, no dating, no travelling, no socializing, just work work work.
Please remind me occasionally that I ‘DO’ actually enjoy this, and that I am very lucky to be where I am. Otherwise I’ll forget and go mad.

So few ever get here. Most quit early or don’t have the courage to take the nececcary steps. They can’t make the sacrifice, I guess. Different priorities.
I need to be here. There is too much work to be done that can’t be done anywhere else.

5 years from now, when I can afford that castle, I’ll finally be able to step away, marry that simple country girl in France (note: watch “The Hairdressers Husband”), and look back at what I’ve done.

Till then…
I will have a cigarrette and turn up the music.