Agnes de Mille Quotes
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Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.
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Ours is an upbeat, a hurried, hasty beat. It keeps pressing us to go farther, to include everything so that we can savor everything, so that we can know everything, so that we will miss nothing. Partly it's greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.
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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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Find the passion. It takes great passion and great energy to do anything creative. I would go so far as to say you can't do it without that 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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No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
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I studied the way I danced- to the point of dropping.
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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. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
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What have we got here in America that we believe we cannot live without? 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! 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. We can't stand silence, because silence includes thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
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Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
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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. What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule.
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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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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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Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times.
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Dancers aren't made of their technique, but their passion.
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One of the good things about my having some recognition is that I can do something for the people I think ought to have more and correct some of the matters fate fails to take care of.
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Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible
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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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There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.
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No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.
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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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I want one word on my tombstone - dancer.
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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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Dance in the body you have.
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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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Related Authors
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Cecil B. DeMille Film director -
Twyla Tharp Dancer -
Judith Jamison Dancer -
Jerome Robbins Theater Producer -
Rouben Mamoulian 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