Agnes de Mille Quotes About Dance
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Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.
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Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
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A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.
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Dancing is such a despised and dishonored trade that if you tell a doctor or a laywer you do choreography he'll look at you as if you were a hummingbird. 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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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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Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times.
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Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible
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But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises. In the same way the lifted leg of an arabesque becomes a wing, and not a mechanical leverage like a raised trap door. This is the precise difference between dancing and acrobatics. The dancer tries to express something; the acrobat merely pulls, raises, stretches and grinds. The acrobat is lost in a web of muscles the dancer is all but invisible in projected idea.
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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 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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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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When I dance I am really meditating rather then performing for an audience. I am completely absorbed by the music and the steps I choose to respond to the music.
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The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
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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. From this voyage no one returns poor or weary.
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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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Dance constitutes a true recapturing of... freedom and childish play.
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Related Authors
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Cecil B. DeMille Film director -
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George Balanchine Choreographer -
Bob Fosse Actor -
Antony Tudor Ballet choreographer -
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Katherine Dunham Dancer -
Martha Graham Choreographer -
Alvin Ailey Choreographer -
Henry George Writer -
Oscar Hammerstein II Librettist -
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Mikhail Baryshnikov Choreographer -
Isadora Duncan Dancer