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In the eyes of the beholder: dancers and choreographers talk about what they find beautiful.

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More and more dancers are breaking stride with the conventions of beauty in our field--both in what's considered a beautiful dancing body and what's considered beautiful artistically. Dance Magazine interviewed nine forward-looking dancers and choreographers to get their insights. We asked them three questions:

What do you find beautiful onstage? How has this changed for you? Can you give an example of what or whom you find beautiful?

Christal Brown

Artistic director, INSPIRIT, a dance company

One of the main characteristics when I think of beauty is self-possession. In my mind, people who are self-possessed are automatically beautiful because they've honed a persona that is authentic. What comes across in performance is that understanding of what makes things work on a visceral level, and it kind of spurts out from there.

When I was coming up in the field, I loved to watch Gwen Welliver, who danced for many years with Doug Varone. I would call her the liquid metal transformer because she could turn from soft to steel in like 2.3 seconds. Choreographer Andrea Woods gave me my first job out of college; I learned from her about intention and understanding where the movement comes from. She can contort her body into what's not thought of as pretty positions and still be beautiful.

It's taken me a while to come up with my own idea of beauty. Coming from a small North Carolina town, being African American, having a physique that isn't necessarily the norm, beauty was something that I was striving to attain, not...

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