What does it mean to dance?

To feel the music and all of life surge through your soul and to
succumb to it, and allow it to move your limbs.

To fly through the air, if only for a brief second, and then to fall
back to earth, much like the birds in the sky, to speak urgency and
futility, subliminal truth, love, both overt and subtle, all through
the movement of the body.

Something beautiful, magical, profane and glorious, mysterious, lovely
and jarring all at the same time.

What does it mean to dance ballet?

To be transformed into a symbol, something that transcends humanity,
and yet represents the Human Condition, and bound by mortality — good,
evil, hope and hate, love and jealousy, birth and death, all in a few
steps, a leap, a thrust, a pirouette.

What is it to love something so much, that you strap on toe shoes and
practice until your nails bleed, until your ankles swell and the
breath cannot escape your lungs fast enough, your heart beating along
with the music.

To feel passion so hard that others cannot comprehend it, and you
cannot comprehend it.

You must move to express it.

To feel the rush of an audience amazed, shocked, awed and moved to
tears by what is unfolding.

To be the heirs of Balanchine and Graham and Baryshnikov.

Oh life, oh love, oh the dance!

What does it mean to dance?

It is to be free enough to lose yourself in the music, and, through
transformation, become the music.

Become the wind and the water.

Become the rhythm of life.

It is the ballet.

–Ben McNeely