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.
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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Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
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No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.
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No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made.
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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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Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
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Dance in the body you have.
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great artists can be uncertain. Of course they are while strugggling to find solutions.
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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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We can’t stand silence, because silence induces thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
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Dancers don’t get invited to visit people. It is assumed a boy dancer will run off with the spoons and a girl with the head of the house.
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But all of these knew very well what they did not want, and what they did not want was the current coin, the well-worn usage.
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The universe lies before you on the floor, in the air, in the mysterious bodies of your dancers, in your mind.
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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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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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So that we will miss nothing. Partly it’s greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.
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