I want one word on my tombstone – dancer.
AGNES DE MILLEThe 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.
More Agnes de Mille Quotes
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What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule.
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Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible
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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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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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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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Tolstoi’s scripts are almost indecipherable.
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Dance in the body you have.
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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 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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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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I studied the way I danced- to the point of dropping.
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No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made.
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A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.
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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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Living is a form of not being sure, not know what next or how… The artists never entirely knows.
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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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The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
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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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But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises.
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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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Dance constitutes a true recapturing of… freedom and childish play.
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great artists can be uncertain. Of course they are while strugggling to find solutions.
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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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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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Destiny is made known silently.
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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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