1. As human beings, all are born free to dance. I have the right to dance. You have the right to dance.
2. This body–your body, my body, the human body– is a dancer’s body.The right to dance shall not be limited by age, training, ethnicity, education, body size and shape, physical ability, or appearance.
3. My right to dance in safety shall not be compromised. I lay the boundaries, call the shots, draw the line.
4. I have the right to take risks, to grow, and to change.
5. I have the right to feel what I feel, to explore what I feel, to dance what I feel. I have the right to express even when I have no words for what I feel.
6. When I’m hot, I’m hot. When I’m not, I’m not. In dancing I can be very, very sexy in many, many ways. And, my dance doesn’t have to be sexy or even pretty. I don’t have to be appealing or attractive or pleasing to anyone.
7. I have the right to dance by myself and with myself, to explore the depths of my own inner universes, to appreciate the rich complexity of my own experience, to discover and reinvent new selves within myself, to explore and expand the limits of my own perception, to deeply experience who I am, to feel my way through the vastness of the cosmos, to honor the wisdom of my own body in motion and in solitary stillness.
8. I have the right to dance with others, to communicate, to learn and to teach, to nurture and be nurtured, to give and to take, to challenge and to be challenged, to be the mirror and to look into the mirror, to play and to work, to witness and to be witnessed, to bask in your light and to show off my brilliance.
9. My brilliance also casts shadows, and my shadows have the right to dance, too.
10. “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”—article Nineteen, Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The medium is the body, and everyone includes you.