Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
AGNES DE MILLEDancers 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.
More Agnes de Mille Quotes
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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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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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What have we got here in America that we believe we cannot live without?
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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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But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises.
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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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Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.
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Destiny is made known silently.
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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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Living is a form of not being sure, not know what next or how… The artists never entirely knows.
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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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The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
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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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What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule.
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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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One of the good things about my having some recognition is that I can do something for the people
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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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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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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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Tolstoi’s scripts are almost indecipherable.
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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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Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times. The dancers don’t even look at one another.
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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.
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From this voyage no one returns poor or weary.
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Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
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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.
AGNES DE MILLE