Mae Jemison： The Cosmic Dance

When I was a little girl, eighth grade, I pitched a fit in order to get my mother to enroll me in dance classes. I was beside myself, and she did. I wanted to be dancing because it was exhilarating, because it was fun, it was another way of creativity. Of course I still love dance, I don't do it as much, but I hope maybe these days I could do Dancing with the Stars, right? Somebody's gonna suggest, I don't know, we could try that out. A 12-year-old girl once asked me, how did dance contribute to your success as an astronaut? And her class laughed, right, because they didn't see the connection. But I told her, you know, it really did make a difference. Dancing trains you in terms of practice, in terms of memory, physical skills and coordination, and just being thick-skinned. So when I think about the arts and the physical sciences, I think that they're both parts of creativity, but they're different because of what they express. I think of the physical sciences as our ability to try to understand the world around us, the universe as it's experienced by everyone, and then trying to influence that universe. And I think of the arts as our attempt to have other people understand our personal perspective of the universe. The arts and the sciences, they provide a fuller understanding of the universe and the world around us. They provide a fuller communication together of what and who we are as people.