In this photograph, Jordan Matter, a New York Times Bestselling Photographer and Author, traveled across America capturing dancers “celebrating everyday life.” The dancers are creatively and spontaneously placed amid ordinary surroundings and ordinary citizens to illustrate those who have lost their brilliance as an innovative child and become lackluster “with cynicism, boredom, and indifference.” Ever since seeing this collection titled “Dancers Among Us,” I really saw the visual and performing arts in a new light.

For one reason or another, I have wanted to become a music educator. One reason? “It’s the only occupation I think I would be remotely good at.” Until recently have I thought that pursuing a degree in music was something more extraordinary compared to pursuing another career entirely. Somewhere off in the distant future, I want to teach students how to read and sing music. The students who would take my choir class would range from students who really had a passion for learning and improving their musical capabilities to those who only took the class because of a fine arts requirement. While among the students with the latter attitude in choir, I gradually saw their small inclination toward choir grow into an actual love and enjoyment for the music in their surrounding environment. Observing that intellectual, social, and emotional growth in those particular students motivated me to not only want to teach students how to read and sing music but to actually want to yearn for that feeling of creating something, creating music.

The fine arts, I believe, really inspires people to physically create happiness in their lives. Of course pursuing an accounting career could bring utter and complete jubilation to an individual (to each his own), but the fine arts brings much more than numbers and theories to life. With the visual and performing arts, anything is at the domain of the artist, and I have yet to truly master creating the extraordinary from the ordinary.

Note:  This image belongs to Jordan Matter.