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.
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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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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No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.
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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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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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The acrobat is lost in a web of muscles the dancer is all but invisible in projected idea.
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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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But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises.
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great artists can be uncertain. Of course they are while strugggling to find solutions.
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My heroines are part of me and my heroes are part of what I’d like to know.
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The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
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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.
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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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I 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.
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Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
AGNES DE MILLE






