March 21 2006

Text By Catherine Jamieson

A dancer's life, and I paraphrase Nureyev here, is characterized and dominated by three things: practice, performance and practice. It's easy to forget when you're sitting on the plush seats, under the soft lighting, in the hushed theatre wearing your very best dress and a new pair of shoes. Easy to forget that the musclature on the backs of their calves was carved there with repetition and endurance, that graceful necks hold both performance-proud heads and those which weep from fatigue and frustration.

Music, dance, literature, photography: their commonality is the sweat that builds the skill, the practice that builds the perfection.