Yeats asks, “how can we know the dancer from the dance?” as if it were impossible, as if the spectacle of performance were absolute. Hungry eyes have come to feast, nd beauty is what they want. This hunger is not content to feed on the pageantry, the gauzy orbs of petal-pink tulle, the costume of beauty. It demands the ideal itself, embodied in the flesh. These young women are crafting a conception of loveliness, the supple arching and twisting and breaking of womanhood What if, in place of starvation, they knew of their wild appetites? Of the rich heritage conferred on them by the curves of their bodies? What if the eyes that are turned on them were filled not with a terrible hunger, but with respect and love? Such a gaze would reveal how much is still sacred here, the beauty that remains despite the years of reflection in the mirrors of others, how even at rest they tremble with the effort that grace requires, with the exhaustion of athletes, with the joy of the dance. They embody not an impossible ideal of beauty, but the haven between studio and stage where all of us occasionally rest, and gather together, and whisper, and laugh It is this discerning gaze, the ability to inhabit “the line between,” that is the mark of an artist worth celebrating.

Susanna Locascio, writer and filmmaker