If you feel depressed you shouldn’t go out on the street because it will show on your face and you’ll give it to others. Misery is a communicable disease.
I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It’s permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable.
It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
I believe that we learn by practice… it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which come shape of achievement, a sense of one’s being, a satisfaction of spirit.
You have no right to go before a public without an adequate technique, just because you feel. Anything feels – a leaf feels, a storm feels – what right have you to do that? You have to have speech, and it’s a cultivated speech.
We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.
