Daily Prompt: Statements of Beauty

Last Tuesday, I joined thirteen other artists for a focus group sponsored by the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission and UC-Davis Extension to generate arts-based solutions for businesses. The businesses sought input on employees' communication skills, adaptability to change and creative thinking.  We dancers, actors, painters, musicians, poets and arts' non-profit leaders shared ideas on how the skills we've developed in our studios and classrooms, at our desks and on stages could apply.

After I explained Day Poems, another participant, a dancer and choreographer, revealed that she uses a similar assignment. She asks her students to identify "Seven Statements of Beauty" over the course of a week. The statements of beauty are movements, not necessarily dance movements, but movement that strikes them.

The process of paying attention, whether to movement, information, images or sound, helps a person define his or her aesthetic and priorities. And enhances creativity.

Daily Prompt: Look for Seven Statements of Beauty. In autumn, movements abound in wind and shadows. Notice.