Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
AGNES DE MILLEIf you want to understand a nation, look at its dances and listen to its folk songs – don’t pay any attention to its politicians.
More Agnes de Mille Quotes
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The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
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Dance constitutes a true recapturing of… freedom and childish play.
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Destiny is made known silently.
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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.
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Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
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The acrobat is lost in a web of muscles the dancer is all but invisible in projected idea.
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No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.
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Find the passion. It takes great passion and great energy to do anything creative. I would go so far as to say you can’t do it without that passion.
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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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I think ought to have more and correct some of the matters fate fails to take care of.
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I learned three important things in college-to use a library, to memorize quickly and visually, to drop asleep at any time given a horizontal surface and fifteen minutes.
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What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule.
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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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One of the good things about my having some recognition is that I can do something for the people
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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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Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible
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No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made.
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Dancing is such a despised and dishonored trade that if you tell a doctor or a laywer you do choreography he’ll look at you as if you were a hummingbird.
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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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What have we got here in America that we believe we cannot live without?
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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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We can’t stand silence, because silence includes thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
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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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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!
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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.
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In the same way the lifted leg of an arabesque becomes a wing, and not a mechanical leverage like a raised trap door.
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