Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Excellence is the name of the game.
One you've danced, you always dance.
Dance is about never-ending aspiration.
The word 'suffering' is not in my vocabulary.
Every dancer lives on the threshold of chucking it.
People come to see beauty, and I dance to give it to them.
Dancing is a gift. You are supposed to do it; it's like breathing.
Dance is not endangered - it will always find a way to express itself.
I believe in spirit and then I believe a manifestation of spirit is dance
I believe in being prepared. I'm going to say that. Pray, prepare, proceed.
The world is full of ways for people to dance. Concert dance doesn't get its due.
I've had a really charmed life, you know. Things always come to me - they just do.
Once you've danced, you always dance. You can't deny the gifts that God sends your way
I haven't had a family, but I don't think of that as a sacrifice: my dancers are my family.
Strive for perfection. Nobody's going to be perfect on this earth. But strive for perfection.
I want to know who you are as a person, and then I want you to develop as a whole human being.
If people all over the world, year after year, request that you do 'Revelations,' you do 'Revelations.'
I was a protege; by the age of 10, I was studying with ballet choreographer Anthony Tudor in a class of adults.
I'm moved by contraries, by opposites, the strength that was my mother's eyes, the beauty of my father's hands.
Learn the craft of knowing how to open your heart and to turn on your creativity. There's a light inside of you.
I went to an audition for a Harry Belafonte Roaring Twenties special for choreographer Donald McKayle, but I failed.
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?
Maybe its a generational thing, but I never wanted to be the best black dancer in the world. I just wanted to be the best.
Maybe it's a generational thing, but I never wanted to be the best black dancer in the world. I just wanted to be the best.
I'm very smart when it comes to choosing dancers and trying to show the world that there's a whole lot of dancing going on.
Dancers use their bodies in extraordinary ways, so we are chronically pre-arthritic, because of how we use our muscles and our bones.
I've danced all over the world, and people are people. We cannot cut off from each other in life. In order to lead, you can't do that.
I felt the naivete of a child in my dancing. I cherished that feeling. I had what I call a knowledgeable naivete, and it worked for me.
You have to dance unencumbered. There's no other way to move. The idea of dance is freedom. It is not exclusiveness, it's inclusiveness.
I've been in a competitive situation almost all my life. I've been having a competition with myself and trying to be the best I could be.
So many people dwell on negativity and I've survived by ignoring it: it dims your light and it's harder each time to turn the power up again.
I've always felt that complement of opposites: body and soul, solitude and companionship, and in the dance studio, contraction and release, rise and fall.
If you look at a dancer in silence, his or her body will be the music. If you turn the music on, that body will become an extension of what you're hearing.
Dance is bigger than the physical body. When you extend your arm, it doesn't stop at the end of your fingers, because you're dancing bigger than that; you're dancing spirit.
We can go on talking about racism and who treated whom badly, but what are you going to do about it? Are you going to wallow in that or are you going to create your own agenda?
It's a real gift to have a husband and wife in the company that love each other and that work together. They check on each other emotionally and physically. That's beautiful to me.
I want people to have their own visions for the dance. Some generations will sit back and relate to the music. And the young people ...they'll have the dance right in front of them.
I don't think of myself as a leader. I am, but I don't think of myself that way. I'm not trying to belittle what I do, but I think of myself as a dancer first. I'll always be a dancer.
As long as there are dancers around who love to dance, there will be an Alvin Ailey American Dance Company. We miss him so much, but he's alive as soon as you see a dancer hit the stage.
Dancing is bigger than the physical body. Think bigger than that. When you extend your arm, it doesn't stop at the end of your fingers, because you're dancing bigger than that. You're dancing spirit.
Dancing is being trusted with other people's guts; choreographing is trusting other people with yours. When I choreograph I'm giving a dancer something to do and trusting the dancer to do it and build on it.
I could say now at 66, yeah, I was a fabulous dancer. I was really terrific, you know. But I was always present. I was present. I was supposed to be where I was supposed to be at the time I was supposed to be.
I believe that this world was set about for us to enjoy and to love and to experience and to have it all be, to a certain extent, unpredictable. Ever since I was a child I have believed that my life has been guided.
I have been guilty of watching Westerns without acknowledging that Native Americans have gone through the same madness as African Americans. Isn't it extraordinary that sometimes the most offended have not seen others being offended?
We're dancing from here, from inside, not from outside. You could look at anybody throwing their leg and kick their leg up and a million pirouettes and do all kinds of tricks and stuff like that. But that's not what dance is really about.
You wake up white, and you think about certain things every day. You wake up black, and you think about certain things. You wake up Chinese, and you think certain things - but those things aren't major. What's major is that you are good at your craft.
Since babyhood, I've always evolved from one thing to another. My mother gave me ballet lessons at 6 as part of her enthusiasm for the arts and for life. We went to museums, to the theater. While her own talent was untapped, she worked for church causes.
As a dancer, you really try to stay true to whatever the choreographer/artistic director is giving you. So, now the shoe is on the other foot and I have to trust everyone else - I have to trust the dancer. As I was trusted as a dancer, I trust my dancers.
At 10, I could walk down the street and see over everybody's head. I don't remember being little or having to look up at people. I think I was born 5 feet 10. It's not that I felt especially tall. I was wondering when everybody else was going to catch up.
Concert dance is the hardest kind of dance. We tour constantly, around the world, year in and year out. It just doesn't work for everybody. It's the lifestyle, it's the stamina, it's the love, it's the dedication, it's the commitment, it's all those words.