Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible
AGNES DE MILLEThe truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
More Agnes de Mille Quotes
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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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Living is a form of not being sure, not know what next or how… The artists never entirely knows.
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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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There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.
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Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
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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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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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The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
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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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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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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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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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I am completely absorbed by the music and the steps I choose to respond to the music.
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Theater people are always pining and agonizing because they’re afraid that they’ll be forgotten. And in America they’re quite right. They will be.
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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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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.
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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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From this voyage no one returns poor or weary.
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What they wanted was something newly experienced, and therefore unknown and hard to attain.
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When I dance I am really meditating rather then performing for an audience.
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To make up a dance, I still need, as I needed then, a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea.
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Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.
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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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Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.
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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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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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