"There is something magical about the performing aspect of all art forms which you still ignore. When you rehearse a combination of steps, or an entire work which you present before an audience, and for that work you must impersonate a character, in order to create an entire story before the eyes of that audience, you believe that you will be seen on stage as a fallible human being. You believe the audience sees through you as through a piece of glass, and behind all the powder, the costumes, the limelight, that they see the person you are; you believe they see all that makes you that person: the stage fright, the concentration, the anxiety and the fear to make a mistake, to fall, to not be good enough.
"But have you ever been in an audience watching yourself a performance? When the curtain opens, when the glowing stage appears before you and those wondrous characters & fantastic settings appear before your eyes, do you see people on stage, who fear to make mistakes or forget their steps or fall, or to not be good enough? No! The only thing you see is a magical world cut off from your own time, a world where you can find a perfect image of what reality should be, but which is cut off from all communication with reality. You see magical settings on stage, which are not made of cardboard or of steel, but of the stuff of dreams; and just as in a vision, the characters you see are also magical, perfect beings who act & move with a drama & power that take your breath away, and make you want to linger in that world, to take an eternal break from reality. For you know nothing bad can happen in that world, only the necessary, simple & pure, is unfolded before your eyes.
"Thus as it is for you when in the audience, so is it also for the audience that watches you when you yourself are on stage. When you tread on stage, you enter that magical world where nothing can go wrong: do not fear those who watch you, because they too see you as a magical being, perfect and without flaw, an image of the ideal. They don't see behind the drama, the costume and the limelight, the secret fear which makes you tense; but they only see the best version of yourself, the potentiality of drama in you unveiled and brought for them on the magical expanse of the stage - and they hardly know that you are still a human being. And that is the miracle of it!
"Therefore think as you tread on the stage before a performance, that you have become the magical being that everyone awaits to appear before their eyes. You must not fear to make mistakes, but you must feel all the power which the audience's expectations endow you with, and which make you temporarily the embodiment of all their dreams, all their hopes, all their thirst for beauty and perfection. That is the secret of the performer: they are protected by the aura the stage brings around them, and act under its guidance & its magic."
- The Living Dancer
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