Quotes by Choreographers - Page 2

Life truly is precious. Gather every moment of it into your arms & embrace it.

To me, the body says what words cannot. I believe that dance was the first art.

Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made.

Dancing on the edge is the only place to be.

If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.

At the time I started in ballet they were dancing 'The Spirit of Champagne' on pointe, in Paris. I thought, 'I don't want to dance the spirit of champagne, I want to drink it!

You are the architect of your own loneliness.

No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.

It has taken me years of struggle, hard work, and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.

To understand what I am saying, you have to believe that dance is something other than technique. We forget where the movements come from. They are born from life. When you create a new work, the point of departure must be contemporary life -- not existing forms of dance.

You didn't earn your heart; you didn't pay for it. It was given to you as a gift. So take advantage of it, enjoy it, and treat yourself the best way possible. A lot of us are just getting through or managing. Raise your standards. Grow, progress, push yourself, and in turn you will love yourself more. And when you love yourself more, you can love others.

Dance is the hidden language of the soul

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others

The body never lies.

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

Sometimes we focus too much on the lyrics that we forget to dance to the music. And sometimes we dance to the music and don't listen to the lyrics. Let the rhythm guide you. Let the lyrics inspire you.

Without passion, all the skill in world won't lift you above your craft

There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.

You don’t get lucky without preparation, and there’s no sense in being prepared if you’re not open to the possibility of a glorious accident.

I have heard stories that it was love at first sight for both of us, that we disappeared to a guest room at Merle's house, had our meals sent up, and didn't emerge for several days. This is absolutely untrue. I would never behave like that as a guest in someone's home. Carlos and I went to my beach house.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.

All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.

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.

The first time I started choreographing was in the dark, in my living room, with the lights completely out, to some popular music on the radio. I put the radio on full blast and I started moving. I didn't know what it looked like. I didn't want to see it... I had to start in the dark.

I danced frightening things. They were frightened of me and therefore thought that I wanted to kill them. I did not want to kill anyone. I loved everyone, but no one loved me, and therefore I became nervous.

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.

You don't enter a dance studio and say "I can't do that." If you do, then why are you in the studio in the first place?

When an artist is asked to speak about form, you expect something different than when a critic talks about it. Because you think that somewhere between sentences and words, the secret will slip out. I am trying to give you that secret; it isn't a secret at all, but it is building solidly, not using secrets. I had been trying to extend into metaphysical extension; that film is changing, metamorphic; that is, infinite; the idea that the movement of life is totally important rather than a single life. My films were built on an incline, an increase in intensity. I hoped to make a form which was infinite, the changingness of things. I thought I would want to find a total form which conveyed that sense, particularly in reference to an Oriental subject. My impression was: one is walking down a corridor of a hotel. One hears a sound, opens a door and a man is playing; one listens for three minutes and closes the door. The music went on before you opened the door and it continues after you close the door. There was neither beginning nor end. Western music increases in intensity to a climax and then resolves itself. Oriental music is infinite; it goes on and on. The Chinese theater goes on for hours and hours with time for lunch moving scenery, etc.

The body says what words cannot.

People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life.

Creativity is more about taking the facts, fictions, and feelings we store away and finding new ways to connect them. What we're talking about here is metaphor. Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art, if it is not art itself. Metaphor is our vocabulary for connecting what we are experiencing now with what we have experienced before. It's not only how we express what we remember , it's how we interpret it - for ourselves and others.

They never raised a statue to a critic.

The only sin is mediocrity.

When you're in a rut, you have to question everything except your ability to get out of it.

There are situations of course that leave you utterly speechless. All you can do is hint at things. Words, too, can't do more than just evoke things. That's where dance comes in again.

I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.