Katherine Dunham Quotes

• There is an energy within... pure strength... the energy of the person which is put in different forms, in different shapes... once we discover that energy I think that such a thing as dance becomes such a delight because you're moving on a stream that is you but it is even over and beyond you.

  Katherine Dunham

  Moving, Thinking, Energy

  59 Copy quote

• Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out

  Katherine Dunham

  Strength, Emotional, Blow

  89 Copy quote

• I used to want the words 'She tried' on my tombstone. Now I want 'She did it.'

  Katherine Dunham

  Inspirational, Strength, Happiness

  74 Copy quote

• We weren't pushing Black is beautiful. We just showed it.

  Katherine Dunham

  Beautiful, Justice, Black

  51 Copy quote

• I always believed that if you set out to be successful, then you already were.

  Katherine Dunham

  Successful, Belief, Always Believe

  60 Copy quote

• When you have faith in something, it’s your reason to be alive and to fight for it.

  Katherine Dunham

  Fighting, Alive, Have Faith

  54 Copy quote

• You dance because you have to. Dance is an essential part of life that has always been with me.

  Katherine Dunham

  Dance, Essentials, Parts Of Life

  42 Copy quote

• I wasn't concerned about the hardships because I always felt I was doing what I had to do, what I wanted to do and what I was destined to do.

  Katherine Dunham

  Hardship, Wanted, Concerned

  38 Copy quote

• In knowing how to overcome little things, a centimeter at a time, gradually when bigger things come, you're prepared.

  Katherine Dunham

  Inspirational, Knowing, Overcoming

  29 Copy quote

• So many dancers paint. I used to paint. I started again recently. While I was dancing, I was very busy with my career. Start something else that makes use of your creative ability because if you don't you will die inside as a person.

  Katherine Dunham

  Careers, Dancing, Dancer

  50 Copy quote

• If you dance, you dance because you have to. Every dancer hurts, you know.

  Katherine Dunham

  Dance, Hurt, Knows

  18 Copy quote

• A creative person has to create. It doesn't really matter what you create. If such a dancer wanted to go out and build the cactus gardens where he could, in Mexico, let him do that, but something that is creative has to go on.

  Katherine Dunham

  Art, Garden, Dancer

  166 Copy quote

• My work has been much more Caribbean and eclectic. I am interested in people, and where they come from happens to have fallen within an area of Africa.

  Katherine Dunham

  People, Eclectic Style, Fallen

  26 Copy quote

• A creative person has to #‎ create .

  Katherine Dunham

  Creative, Persons, Creative Person

  29 Copy quote

• I had certain physical limitations that made me change the choreography for myself or made me more interested in choreography only rather than dancing. I have never been a person who wanted to just dance. I have always been interested in developing for other people.

  Katherine Dunham

  Dance, People, Dancing

  17 Copy quote

• I really think that aside from admiring my talent you really admire me as a person and as a woman.

  Katherine Dunham

  Thinking, Talent, Admire

  26 Copy quote

• I certainly feel my career was a great career because it inspired so many many people, literally hundreds of people to follow a new kind of life and to realize that they could make out and advance their own professional and private and social lives.

  Katherine Dunham

  Careers, People, Kind

  6 Copy quote

• Black people should have recognition for themselves and their backgrounds and their relationships with other people in the world and thus lose some of their alienation. This museum has certainly stood for that in this town.

  Katherine Dunham

  Museums, Should Have, People

  12 Copy quote

• We don't intend to always keep this necessarily African oriented. Originally I had hoped to have African American Indian of this area, and the Appalachian of this area, but at the same time, just as we have the Haitian room, we will always have room for another exhibit.

  Katherine Dunham

  African American, Rooms, American Indian

  15 Copy quote

• Don't think you are going to go on forever because you are not and begin to plan something that will compensate as you reduce your capacities to leap or turn on this or that or the other, begin thinking of something else.

  Katherine Dunham

  Thinking, Forever, African American

  11 Copy quote

• Haiti itself was also photographed, some of the streets, some of the mountains, rivers, streams, etc. were photographed before talking with me about how I felt about Haiti. Then the camera went to our voodoo temple and saw a serious ceremony, a real ceremony.

  Katherine Dunham

  Real, Talking, Rivers

  20 Copy quote

• For the kind of thing that we were showing, the budget was sufficient. As we were speaking of in Haiti, we had not done that before in exactly this form and we had to have costumes for it.

  Katherine Dunham

  Done, Haiti, Costumes

  8 Copy quote

• I am happy to know that my husband regards me as a woman and a person.

  Katherine Dunham

  Funny, Husband, Persons

  4 Copy quote

• Without my husband's costumes I wouldn't have known how to accomplish what I saw in my own mind's eyes for choreography. And then seeing our choreography and knowing the background of it I am sure helped my husband a great deal with what he designed for us.

  Katherine Dunham

  Husband, Eye, Knowing

  9 Copy quote

• Frequently producers have partners that they never let the public know about.

  Katherine Dunham

  Partners, Producers, Knows

  4 Copy quote

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