Opening ballet from "White Nights" by Mikhail Baryshnikov

In another wonderful conversation I often have with Mahmoud Reda, we asked each other what was essential in a DANCER.
Mahmoud told me about technique and talent, creativity and understanding of the dance craft.
My answer was simple and concise:
"A dancer should be breath taking."

For me, as a DANCER myself, I consider my job done when I can take the breath of my audience away, even if for a few seconds.
When DANCE achieves THAT, I say there s a LIGHT, a moment of suspension and extreme emotion when DANCER and AUDIENCE are connected through their hearts and souls.
When your breath is taken away, it means something in your own organism is interrupted and questioned. Organs and cells stop, as if in awe or scared by something NEW and yet so familiar, for some undefined time and there is a MOMENT of absence from our normal world.

A dancer has to be breath taking. Period.
If not, Dance is just a beautiful connection of different movements, empty as balloons.
No deal.

To be a DANCER is a work in progress.
The quality that turns a DANCER into an ARTIST able to touch people s minds, hearts and souls is a QUALITY , a DIVINE quality that - I believe ! - only God can give or take away from us.
Praying to always take my own breath away while dancing. The rest follows so naturally that it almost becomes common.