The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
AGNES DE MILLETo make up a dance, I still need, as I needed then, a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea.
More Agnes de Mille Quotes
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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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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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From this voyage no one returns poor or weary.
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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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We have the most varied and imaginative bathrooms in the world, we have kitchens with the most gimmicks, we have houses with every possible electrical gadget to save ourselves all kinds of trouble – all so that we can have leisure. Leisure, leisure, leisure!
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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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I am completely absorbed by the music and the steps I choose to respond to the music.
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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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There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.
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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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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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Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible
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This is the precise difference between dancing and acrobatics. The dancer tries to express something; the acrobat merely pulls, raises, stretches and grinds.
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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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The universe lies before you on the floor, in the air, in the mysterious bodies of your dancers, in your mind.
AGNES DE MILLE