Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
AGNES DE MILLEI 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.
More Agnes de Mille Quotes
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We can’t stand silence, because silence includes thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
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The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
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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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Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
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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.
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We can’t stand silence, because silence induces thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
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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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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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Destiny is made known silently.
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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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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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Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.
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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.
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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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