A Midnight Dance

by Joanna Davidson Politano

“Is art only validated by the presence of an audience?”

with that look of ten thousand unwritten poems battling for release from his troubled mind.

“Your eyes are always the first to latch onto something, and they’ll guide the rest of you there.”

“I don’t know if I could bear to walk any deeper into the shadows around that man.

we in theater will do what all art does—deliver truth dressed in beautiful movement and magnificent storytelling.”

If anyone had insight on being romantic and falling in love, it was Lily. She did it once or twice a week.

so badly. You took every criticism deeply to heart and let it live there, echoing back every time you performed.

Rules are a worthy fence to keep you driving on the road, but as a destination, perfection is unreachable.

“A dancer can fall with as much grace as she dances, if she learns how.” “I’d rather concentrate on not falling.” “Well now, that simply isn’t an option.”

One was always restless until he knew what home was for him.

Love is a wonderful, terrible thing. Just

People don’t encounter art to gawk, they come to feel something,

Real life has its own sort of beauty, and it’s pulsing with color and dimension, the warmth of another person beside you—a real one, flaws and all.

There was a sacred moment just before the music began, that silence when I closed my eyes and forced the world to drop away like the lowering gauzy tree fronds, and my being filled with such unexplainable peace and delight. All I had to do was be still, cease striving, and know. Know, as I knew breathing and gravity and Mama’s love.

Any work one did, it seemed, could be intertwined with God and point onlookers to him. I will praise thee, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvelous works. There. That was my story.

It never had made sense, God’s personal pursuit of me.

“It’s never about who’s watching—you should know that.”

“It’s the flaws that tell us when something’s real.