“Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.”

I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.

I want to make people feel intensely alive. I’d rather have them against me than indifferent.

Dancers are the messengers of the gods.

We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.

I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.

I am certain that movement never lies. There is only one law of posture I have been able to discover – the perpendicular line connecting heaven and earth.

Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing.

The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice.

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

The past is not dead; it is not even past. People live on inner time; the moment in which a decisive thought or feeling takes place can be at any time. Timeless feelings are common to all of us.

All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.

Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.

Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.

In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.