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.
AGNES DE MILLETolstoi’s scripts are almost indecipherable.
More Agnes de Mille Quotes
-
-
A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.
AGNES DE MILLE -
But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises.
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 -
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.
AGNES DE MILLE -
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 MILLE -
So that we will miss nothing. Partly it’s greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.
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 -
Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.
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 -
When I dance I am really meditating rather then performing for an audience.
AGNES DE MILLE -
Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
AGNES DE MILLE -
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.
AGNES DE MILLE -
So that we don’t go mad in the leisure, we have color TV. So that there will never, never, be a moment of silence, we have radio and Muzak.
AGNES DE MILLE -
We can’t stand silence, because silence includes thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
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 -
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.
AGNES DE MILLE -
I studied the way I danced- to the point of dropping.
AGNES DE MILLE -
This is the precise difference between dancing and acrobatics. The dancer tries to express something; the acrobat merely pulls, raises, stretches and grinds.
AGNES DE MILLE -
The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
AGNES DE MILLE -
great artists can be uncertain. Of course they are while strugggling to find solutions.
AGNES DE MILLE -
We can’t stand silence, because silence induces thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
AGNES DE MILLE -
Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
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 -
Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times. The dancers don’t even look at one another.
AGNES DE MILLE -
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.
AGNES DE MILLE -
No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made.
AGNES DE MILLE