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.
AGNES DE MILLEI 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.
More Agnes de Mille Quotes
-
-
From this voyage no one returns poor or weary.
AGNES DE MILLE -
I studied the way I danced- to the point of dropping.
AGNES DE MILLE -
Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.
AGNES DE MILLE -
What they wanted was something newly experienced, and therefore unknown and hard to attain.
AGNES DE MILLE -
Dance constitutes a true recapturing of… freedom and childish play.
AGNES DE MILLE -
No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.
AGNES DE MILLE -
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 MILLE -
The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
AGNES DE MILLE -
The universe lies before you on the floor, in the air, in the mysterious bodies of your dancers, in your mind.
AGNES DE MILLE -
The practice mirror is to be used for the correction of faults, not for a love affair, and the figure you watch should not become your dearest friend.
AGNES DE MILLE -
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.
AGNES DE MILLE -
The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
AGNES DE MILLE -
Then I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down… and kissed him. And the world cracked open.
AGNES DE MILLE -
We have the most varied and imaginative bathrooms in the world, we have kitchens with the most gimmicks, we have houses with every possible electrical gadget to save ourselves all kinds of trouble – all so that we can have leisure. Leisure, leisure, leisure!
AGNES DE MILLE -
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.
AGNES DE MILLE