“In the same way the lifted leg of an arabesque becomes a wing, and not a mechanical leverage like a raised trap door.”

What they wanted was something newly experienced, and therefore unknown and hard to attain.

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.

But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises.

Living is a form of not being sure, not know what next or how… The artists never entirely knows.

Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.

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.

Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.

The universe lies before you on the floor, in the air, in the mysterious bodies of your dancers, in your mind.

No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.

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.

The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.

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.

The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.

Dance constitutes a true recapturing of… freedom and childish play.

To make up a dance, I still need, as I needed then, a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea.

We can’t stand silence, because silence includes thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.