Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
AGNES DE MILLEWe can’t stand silence, because silence induces thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
More Agnes de Mille Quotes
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To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.
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The choreographic process is exhausting. It happens on one’s feet after hours of work, and the energy required is roughly the equivalent of writing a novel and winning a tennis match simultaneously.
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Dancers aren’t made of their technique, but their passion.
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So that we don’t go mad in the leisure, we have color TV. So that there will never, never, be a moment of silence, we have radio and Muzak.
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Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.
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Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times. The dancers don’t even look at one another.
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Dance constitutes a true recapturing of… freedom and childish play.
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No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.
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great artists can be uncertain. Of course they are while strugggling to find solutions.
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I studied the way I danced- to the point of dropping.
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From this voyage no one returns poor or weary.
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Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.
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One of the good things about my having some recognition is that I can do something for the people
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A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.
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They are just a lot of isolated individuals jiggling in a kind of self-hypnosis and dancing with others only to remind themselves that we are not completely alone in this world.
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What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule.
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Emily Dickinson provided four or more alternates for every word; Beethoven wrestled with endings to the point of exhaustion; in our day Jerome Robbins and his lack of decision are a byword in the dance profession.
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Tolstoi’s scripts are almost indecipherable.
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If you want to understand a nation, look at its dances and listen to its folk songs – don’t pay any attention to its politicians.
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My heroines are part of me and my heroes are part of what I’d like to know.
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Dance in the body you have.
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Ours is an upbeat, a hurried, hasty beat. It keeps pressing us to go farther, to include everything so that we can savor everything, so that we can know everything.
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I am completely absorbed by the music and the steps I choose to respond to the music.
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Then I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down… and kissed him. And the world cracked open.
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The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
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I had had to learn the difference between the bearable fatigue and the unbearable, the fatigue of fear. The first can be cured by a night’s sleep; the second kills.
AGNES DE MILLE