To make up a dance, I still need, as I needed then, a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea.
AGNES DE MILLEEmily 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.
More Agnes de Mille Quotes
-
-
The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
AGNES DE MILLE -
My heroines are part of me and my heroes are part of what I’d like to know.
AGNES DE MILLE -
Dance constitutes a true recapturing of… freedom and childish play.
AGNES DE MILLE -
There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.
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 -
When I dance I am really meditating rather then performing for an audience.
AGNES DE MILLE -
Living is a form of not being sure, not know what next or how… The artists never entirely knows.
AGNES DE MILLE -
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.
AGNES DE MILLE -
Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.
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 -
The acrobat is lost in a web of muscles the dancer is all but invisible in projected idea.
AGNES DE MILLE -
Destiny is made known silently.
AGNES DE MILLE -
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 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