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Keeping the Dancer Inside Alive

  • On Dancers and Athletes

    Last week I finished Tori Murden McClure’s book, A Pearl in the Storm, in which she becomes the first woman to row across the Atlantic by herself in a rowboat, beset by hurricanes and in danger of death. Her rowboat was called The American Pearl. When she achieved this, Tori had already been the first…

  • Dreams of Greatness

    My son recently told me that he loved that I still had hopes and dreams. I could take this as a sign that he thinks I’m impossibly old (he is 25) but instead I am choosing to take it at face value. Is it true? I wondered when he said that. It is true. One…

  • Butterflies — a poem by Kristin Boyce

    Intro Years before I discovered a love of dance, I knew that I loved poetry. Poems that I wrote as a tween and teen are still stored in the pulse of my muscle memory. I’m sure they would be judged harshly by any objective measure, but my heart has never disowned them. By the time…

  • Dance As Language

    There are performance standards that dancers must live up to in order to dance in a way that falls within the boundaries of a certain dance genre or practice. One is not “doing ballet”, for example, if one does not make use the steps, positions, and movements that are part of what counts a ballet,…

  • Are We Our Bodies?

    What does it mean for your body to be the instrument of your art, as it is often said of dance? A human body is not an inanimate object, like a puppet. Yet your body is part of the material world. In the sun, its skin will burn and blister. In the rain, it will…

  • Reuniting with Dance Friends by Jennifer DeLuca

    I don’t know what it is about 2025 but all of the people that made me who I am keep showing up and I am so here for it! I shared a conversation with a friend recently asking why this coming together feels so good and I think we both realized that in high school,…

  • Dancing With My Children

    When my daughter was small enough to fit on my lap – able to hold up her head and sit up but not yet walk away from me – I would play music and move her legs and arms up and down to the beat. I wanted her to hear the rhythm, to feel it…

  • Ballet for the Older Body by Andrea Webber

    “Ballet for the Older Body” by Andrea Webber I am a retired staff physician from a busy city hospital in the Bronx and in two weeks’ time I shall be 79 years of age. Over a decade ago, I left the intensity and art of medicine for the intensity and art of the barre. My local…

  • Some Dance Memories by Arli Epton

    I started dancing when about 7 years old, at a local dance studio. Classes included both ballet and tap.  Those awkward plies and brush-brush-stamps remain in my memory to this day.  But my viewpoint was on my family, my neighborhood, school, and love of reading. In public high school, as a sophomore, I was able…

  • My Mid-Life Crisis Samba Story by Susan Kim-Stuart

    My Mid-Life Crisis Samba Story by Susan Kim-Stuart

    There comes a time in every woman’s life when she realizes the kids are about to leave the nest, her AARP card is whispering seductively from the junk drawer, while arthritic knees begin to squeak as she climbs a single flight of stairs. I’m two weeks shy of 57. My youngest is a high school…