To make up a dance, I still need, as I needed then, a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea.
AGNES DE MILLEI had had to learn the difference between the bearable fatigue and the unbearable, the fatigue of fear. The first can be cured by a night’s sleep; the second kills.
More Agnes de Mille Quotes
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I 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.
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Dance in the body you have.
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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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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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What have we got here in America that we believe we cannot live without?
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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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No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made.
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There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.
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When I dance I am really meditating rather then performing for an audience.
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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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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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Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times. The dancers don’t even look at one another.
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The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
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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 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