Just to back up Asa's original point:
This is very true for a lot of disciplines. In martial arts, for example, you do tons of stance drills, kicking and punching drills, and forms. You practice them over and over until they are in your muscle memory and mind and heart. However, when you use your martial arts in competition or some other situation, you don't do the forms and drills; you just do what you need to do as the situation calls for it.
To draw another analogy, ballet is the same thing. I can walk into any ballet class anywhere in the world and know what to expect. We will do barre exercises, and they will go in a specific order; and then we will dance in the centre and those exercises will go in a specific order. However, this is all in preparation for performance. No one does barre and centre on stage (no one would pay to see it!) However the idea is to train those movements so specifically and instinctively that the dancer can handle any choreography given for performance; and beyond that, can manage any sort of event that might happen in performance (e.g. a shoe breaking, a slippery spot on the floor, etc.) with grace and aplomb.
The training is not the art form; the training is the development of a toolbox with which to engage in the art form. Technique is the basis: you have to learn the rules to such precision and expertise that you can break them on the fly if the discipline asks it of you. However every movement comes from and returns to the technique you have spent weeks/months/years developing.
I can only perform "Snow" in my ballet company's "Nutcracker," dancing for a mere 6 minutes, because I have trained for over 20 years on an daily basis to develop the muscle memory and physical experience necessary to get me through that 6 minutes. There is so much that happens "invisibly" behind what is seen on the surface. What the audience sees is the *result* of those 20+ years, but not those 20 years' training. What's happened inside those studio walls, behind the theatre, is between me, my body, my teachers, and my artistic director. I consider it all to be ballet, but there is a significant difference between a dancer who has only class/technical experience, and a dancer who also has performance experience. IMO, the former is missing a substantial component of the art form.
Two thumbs up for Asa.
