No Shortcuts

"Aim at softness and ease in your performance of a dance.

Endeavor that all shall be harmonious.
However hard you work at your lessons or at rehearsals,
let none of this effort be visible in your performance.
There must be no sign of concentration, exertion, or tension.
All must be free and natural.
For the true art is that which conceals the labor that produced it."

-Enrico Cecchetti

I teach and study a classical method of ballet called The Cecchetti Method.  It's a very controversial topic of conversation when it comes to classical ballet training because there are so many different schools of thought.  I personally don't think any of them are necessarily BETTER than the other, I truly think it depends upon the dedication, gifting and experience of the teacher paired with the same of the individual student.

  But I do love this method!  I love the clarity and structured curriculum if offers.  I love it's history. 

 I love that it takes time to reap rewards. 

 There are so many issues today that seek to find a shortcut. Dance training is one of those.  There seems to be a faster way to accomplish what should take years.  I love that this method of classical training provides some restraint, so that a young dancer with big dreams has to walk daily within the bounds of discipline.  The reward a dancer ultimately seeks is the performance.  Those opportunities to display all of the fruit of the daily, disciplined training.  Most dancers get many chances to perform, but not every dancer is able to experience those performances that set her free.

Every dancer at some level is continually seeking that moment where everything becomes free and natural.  It's where the essence of GRACE abounds.  Those are the moments that inspire.  Those are the performances that are remembered.  Those are the times when TRUE ART of a dancer  is revealed.

"For the true art is that which conceals the labor that produced it."

And when I think about my Savior and the GRACE that those moments over the course of three days, created I am always humbled, grateful, unable to fully comprehend the depths of darkness and the  demands of the cross.....But when I look to the sign and message that His resurrection produces within me...it is there where I see the TRUE ART of the cross.  It's in the REALITY of the resurrection that I see the TRUE ART of our God.

This is where ALL things are found free and natural..... restored and revealed in the JOY of His labor.

"...who for the JOY set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." -Hebrews 12:2

There is no shortcut to those freedom producing performances for a dancer.  There was no shortcut past the cross to the throne.  And there remains no shortcut to our freedom... our freedom is revealed within the daily, disciplined relationship.

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