Dance fascinates me.

I have been fortunate this past year to spend a lot of time with musicians, observing how they coax melody from their instruments. It is so interesting to watch a group of musicians collaborate, each one contributing to the sound with percussion or bass or flying fingers on the strings of a banjo. I’ve tried, but I can’t really play anything and I only sing when nobody’s listening, but I love music. And music makers.

But dance is a different experience. Dancers don’t make music. They interpret it through their whole bodies. It was my privilege to watch a rehearsal of the Ruth Botchan Dance Company at their studio in Berkeley. I need a new vocabulary to describe what I saw. Their movements are precise yet free, a seemingly spontaneous response to the music that results in the most beautiful shapes. Three or four individual bodies create a new entity. It truly is moving art.

If you are in the Berkeley area on February 25th and 26th, I invite you to experience these beautiful dancers at a live performance.

Bringing music alive.

Moving art.