Dance is the most evanescent, and yet the most permanent of all of the arts: it has been with humankind from time out of mind and yet, once performed, it disappears.

Dance forms the sum total of the traces of its movements, largely and immediately historical as soon as it is performed, except as a memory in the minds of the perfomer, creator and viewer. Until recent decades with the advent of film, dance has historically left no traces of its specific and minute movement practices to be analyzed in a frozen form and yet, as Confucius sagely observed, its movement practices embody stylistic elements that form a rich source of information about the societies in which it is performed.

Dance has been my life. It has been the key for opening doors to cultural treasures and the lens through which I view life. I find the endless capacity for the creative movements that human beings, in all of their cultural diversity, choose to call "dance" worthy of a lifetime of study. Because its medium is the human body, that which all of us possess, it transceneds language and enables a visceral understanding of the human condition not equaled in any other art form.

-Dr. Anthony Shay