Choreographers Quotes - Page 2

• 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.

  Martha Graham

  Inspirational, Dance, Mean

  22 Copy quote

• More and more, I am pulled reluctantly towards a strong horizontal current, which is a place where time is moving at such high velocity, that even our breath is forced to accelerate just in order for us humans to survive. And I have always believed, that it is in our slow exhalation, where the sense of this deep spiritual energy resides. In a world moving so fast, with the growth of technology and information, I am somehow inclined to move against this current, in search of what it might mean to be connected not just spiritually, but also vertically.

  Akram Khan

  Dance, Spiritual, Time

  64 Copy quote

• First of all, the most important, that is to learn everything good that has survived from other times, and carefully to watch the bad - and throw it out.

  Ninette de Valois

  Dance, Learning, Past

  20 Copy quote

• I saw the dance as a vision of ineffable power. A man could, with dignity and a towering majesty, dance. Not mince, cavort, do "fancy dancing" or "showoff" steps. No: Dance as Michelangelo's visions dance and as the music of Bach dances.

  Jose Limon

  Music, Dance, Art

  104 Copy quote

• Solo dancing does not exist: the dancer dances with the floor: add another dancer and you have a quartet: each dance with the other and each with the floor.

  Steve Paxton

  Dance, Dancing, Doe

  276 Copy quote

• You are the only one of you. From the beginning of time till the end of this world to the end of eternity. There's only one of you ever created. Ev-er. You are the only you. That's pretty powerful. So why on earth would you want to look like anybody else, dress like anyone else, dance like anyone else, be someone else, when you are a legend in your own right?

  Mia Michaels

  Inspirational, Dance, Being Yourself

  82 Copy quote

• Stay hungry to become the best that you can be. Never be satisfied with the level of artistry you've attained. You can always be better.

  Mia Michaels

  Motivational, Levels, Becoming

  69 Copy quote

• Dance training can't be separate from life training. Everything that comes into our lives is training. The qualities we admire in great dancing are the same qualities we admire in human beings: honesty, courage, fearlessness, generosity, wisdom, depth, compassion,and humanity.

  Alonzo King

  Life, Dance, Wisdom

  88 Copy quote

• Are you a stingy breather? Well, don't be. Be extravagant with you breathing and come fully alive.

  Ron Fletcher

  Breathing, Alive, Breathe

  73 Copy quote

• When I'm taking my last breath, I want to look at how I used up the best of myself. How much did I sweat, push, pull, rip, fall, hit, crash, explode?...My dream is to be so well-used that in my last-half second, I just burst into dust.

  Elizabeth Streb

  Life, Dance, Dream

  Elizabeth Streb (2010). “Streb: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero”, p.51, The Feminist Press at CUNY

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• GRINNING, DUCKING MY HEAD FOR BALANCE, I START TO SPIN WILDLY AS I CAN.  THAT IS MY FAVORITE DANCE, BECAUSE IT CONTAINS A SECRET.  THE FASTER I TWIRL, THE MORE I AM STILL  INSIDE.  MY DANCE IS ALL MOTION WITHOUT,  ALL SILENCE WITHIN.  AS MUCH AS I LOVE TO MAKE MUSIC, IT'S THE UNHEARD MUSIC THAT NEVER DIES.  AND SILENCE IS MY REAL DANCE, THOUGH IT NEVER MOVES.  IT STANDS ASIDE, MY CHOREOGRAPHER OF GRACE, AND BLESSES EACH FINGER AND TOE.

  Michael Jackson

  Real, Moving, Silence

  9 Copy quote

• The person drawn to dance as profession is notoriously unintellectual. He thinks with his muscles, delights in expression with body, not words; finds analysis painful and boring; and is a creature of physical ebullience.

  Doris Humphrey

  Dance, Stupid, Thinking

  Doris Humphrey (1959). “The art of making dances”

  62 Copy quote

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• Existence is movement. Action is movement. Existence is defined by the rhythm of forces in natural balance. (...) It is our appreciation for dance that allows us to see clearly the rhythms of nature and to take natural rhythm to a plane of well-organised art and culture.

  Rudolf von Laban

  Dance, Appreciation, Art

  187 Copy quote

• A dancer should learn from all the arts. Go to museums and look at the paintings. See how they balance things. Everything you do in the arts enriches you.

  Alicia Alonso

  Dance, Art, Learning

  45 Copy quote

• The Dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing.

  Doris Humphrey

  Dance, Art, Believe

  75 Copy quote

• There is a vitality, a life force, 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 be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

  Martha Graham

  Dance, Block, Yoga

  "The Life and Work of Martha Graham". Book by Agnes de Mille, p. 264, 1991.

  194 Copy quote

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• Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

  Martha Graham

  Dance, Volleyball, Mean

  Martha Graham (1991). “Blood memory”, Doubleday

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• Technique is what you fall back on when you run out of inspiration.

  Rudolf Nureyev

  Motivational, Dance, Running

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Parkour teaches you to be sure of what you are able to do.

  David Belle

  Inspirational, Learning, Able

  81 Copy quote

• I don't go to a gym, I don't do yoga. I don't do personal training.

  Mikhail Baryshnikov

  Fitness, Yoga, Training

  229 Copy quote

• Why do I dance? Dance is my medicine. It’s the scream which eases for a while the terrible frustration common to all human beings who because of race, creed, or color, are ‘invisible’. Dance is the fist with which I fight the sickening ignorance of prejudice.

  Pearl Primus

  Dance, Ignorance, Fighting

  109 Copy quote

• Hardly any generation wants to take the whole of the last generation, it just wants to take its best bits.

  Ninette de Valois

  Generations, Want, Lasts

  23 Copy quote

• I do not like eating meat because I have seen lambs and pigs killed. I saw and felt their pain. They felt the approaching death. I could not bear it. I cried like a child. I ran up a hill and could not breathe. I felt that I was choking. I felt the death of the lamb.

  Vaslav Nijinsky

  Death, Children, Pain

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

  84 Copy quote

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• The real self of an artiste lies in art, so when an artiste performs, all the pain, trauma and tension get released through art, be it dancing, painting, singing, writing or even martial arts.

  Mrinalini Sarabhai

  Dance, Art, Pain

  22 Copy quote

• Just the pleasure of moving and the pleasure of using your body is, I think, maybe the main point. And the pleasure of dancing with somebody in an unplanned and spontaneous way, when you're free to invent and they're free to invent and you're neither one hampering the other - that's a very pleasant social form.

  Steve Paxton

  Dance, Moving, Thinking

  76 Copy quote