Not Now, Honey

Every single one of you who dances has almost certainly seen this quote. At least you have if you hang out on the internet at all (and obviously you do, so...):

And maybe it's okay if you're talking to a room full of professionals. But, you know what, George? I totally have to do five zillion pirouettes across the floor in half an hour and my energy level is down around my ankles SO YEAH, I am going to take it a little easy on this excessively long string of fondues, thanks.
In fact, when I first started dancing I had to really learn to back off at the barre if I wanted to even attempt center work later in the class. I'm better, now, for sure. I can pull those développés up as far as I can and not focus so much on transferring my weight after every close to fifth, but still. I want to be able to stand up tomorrow, dude.
Eh. Balanchine was kind of a dick, anyway.

the felicities of rapid motion

"It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind;--but when a beginning is made--when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt--it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more."

-from "Emma" by Jane Austen

la danse est la raison

Joseph Campbell in his book The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology relates an interesting incident... A western sociologist had been taken to every Shinto shrine in Japan, and had become very confused by this uniquely Japanese form of worship. “He had observed the stately procession of the priests in their white vestments and black headdresses and black wooden shoes. He had heard the eerie risings of the spirit-like music, the pluckings of the koto, the alternating light and heavy drumbeats, the wind instruments and great gongs mingling with the sounds of wind and pines and sea. He had watched the heavily garbed dancers, some masked, others not, moving in dreamlike trance against intoned utterances. Then the whole thing would be over, the ritual done. But what did it mean?
“Finally at a lawn party in a Japanese garden of rocks and lakes and pagodas and paths leading into unforeseen vistas, he confronted a Shinto priest with his dilemma. ‘I’ve been to your Shinto shrines and I’ve seen quite a few of your ceremonies’, he explained, ‘but I still don’t get your ideology or your theology.’ The Japanese priest pondered the visiting sociologist’s question and then respectfully answered with a smile. ‘We do not have ideology. We do not have theology. We dance.’ ”