In 1987 I was working in a professional show in London, England. I was surrounded by actors, musicians and dancers and it occurred to me, in a flash of Abanazar's magic dust, that dancers are amazing. Not just great, but truly amazing.
Before a show, musicians get the musical score, they practice and then, on show night, under the guidance of a conductor, they play their musical instruments with a printed copy of the music in front of them. The job of the actor is slightly harder. Before a show, actors get the script and they read it. Then they take it home and read it over and over until they learn it by heart. For most of the rehearsal period they are even allowed to have their scripts with them. Even during the performance actors don't need to worry too much about forgetting their lines, as there is usually someone sitting in prompt corner who will shout out, in a theatrical whisper, any lines which have been forgotten.
Dancers, on the other hand, have to do something quite different. Dancers have to learn thousands of subtle changes in body position simply by watching someone demonstrating those movements. They don't write the moves down, and they're not given a book with theirs and everyone else's moves written in. Imagine if actors or musicians had to learn their parts by heart simply by watching or listening to someone else. When dancers go home at the end of rehearsals they have to practice, but they don't have anything to remind them of the dance moves, other than their own fantastic memory. On show night dancers don't have a conductor, as musicians do, to keep them in time with the other dancers, and they don't have someone sitting off stage during a performance who will remind them what comes next, they have to do all this for themselves, in the full glare of the audience.
