It was a late start compared to most dancers, who begin their careers before the age of 10 and retire in their early 30's, according to a study done in 2004, due to the intense rigors of a profession that demands constant physical and performance-based perfection.
Still, Mr. O'Rourke has never been subjected to the intense scrutiny and rigors of a national campaign, and this year he was running against a relatively unpopular figure, Mr. Cruz.
Past and present, formal rigor and intense emotion, music and dance, the aural and the visual -- all these elements fuse with a refreshing blend of the pure and the brazen in Ms. De Keersmaeker's fertile imagination.
While it's easy to eye roll at a bunch of kids wearing bow-ties, white gloves, and doing all-vocal (and un-ironic) covers of Lil Wayne's "How to Love," these are students who balance the demands of their intense singing groups with the rigor of being a Yale undergrad.
Despite the physical rigors of his intense solos, Allen likes to stay neat.
But many pointed to the rigors of the intense El Nino winter, and others blamed police sweeps that displaced many homeless people from places like Golden Gate Park.
For many — some of whom were picked for the squad straight out of school — it was the first time they had been given any advice on nutrition and conditioning or had endured the rigors of regular, intense training sessions.
(The one study that strongly contradicts that consensus, published by Gilles-Éric Séralini, has been retracted and subjected to intense criticism for its lack of rigor and for the ethics of his research methods).
My choirmaster was an incredible force: charismatic, disciplined, intense and possessing the sort of persuasive rigor it takes to coax music out of a handful of schoolboys.
This dismal record has put champions of fiscal rigor at the European Commission under intense pressure to back off unpopular budget cuts and instead follow the prescriptions of John Maynard Keynes, the late British economist who urged that government spending be ramped up in times of crisis.
