Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There is obviously a power and a truth in action that doesn't lie, which words easily can do.
That's what improvising is like for me. There's no tollbooth between my impulse and my action.
I was privileged to be able to study a year with Martha Graham, the last year she was teaching.
I don't think that scheduling is uncreative. I think that structure is required for creativity.
I think that anyone who's pushed to do the very best that they can is privileged. It's a luxury.
The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.
When I was a kid, toe dancing and toe shoes had a meaning in our culture as a serious kind of art.
By making the start of the sequence automatic, they replace doubt and fear with comfort and routine.
when the time came I would do battle with my mother for the right to sit at the center of my own life.
Men and women are very different athletes, and frankly, I didn't want to deal with the male potential.
When you stimulate your body, your brain comes alive in ways you can't simulate in a sedentary position.
Traveling the paths of greatness, even in someone else's footprints, is a vital means to acquiring skill.
I have learned over the years that you should never save for two meetings what you can accomplish in one.
I'm not one who divides music, dance or art into various categories. Either something works, or it doesn't.
I have a sort of tactility about music. I go into record stores and just run my fingers over it, the spines.
I had to become the greatest choreographer of my time. That was my mission, and that's what I set out to do.
I was valedictorian. Did I enjoy going to school? I hated it. It wasn't a choice on my part, it was expected.
When I was a kid, the avant-garde to me was boring because it was just the flip side of being really successful.
You can keep on chewing gum for ten hours, but after about a minute and a half you've got all the good out of it.
I've always found it necessity to strip away everything but the most fundamental ways to work - the rest is style.
You can only generate ideas when you put pencil to paper, brush to canvas... when you actually do something physical.
When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love and faith.
My father always said, 'I don't care if you're a ditch digger, as long as you're the best ditch digger in the world.'
Creativity is more about taking the facts, fictions, and feelings we store away and finding new ways to connect them.
The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.
Things change all the time, so why do people make such a philosophical to-do that things are constantly in transition?
Balzac loved courtesans. They were independent women, and in the 19th century, that was a breed that was just evolving.
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.
A young person has to start making decisions for themselves at a much earlier age than an overbearing parent allows one.
I'm not interested in seeing dance die. It's not to my advantage. Nor is it to our culture's advantage or anybody else's.
There are as many forms of memory as there are ways of perceiving, and every one of them is worth mining for inspiration.
In the not-for-profit world, there can be wastefulness because there's not the desperate urgency of when you're on a clock.
The ultimate point of a piece for me is that it drives the next one. Does it open new doors? That's the success of a piece.
I don't mean this, but I'm going to say it anyway. I don't really think of pop art and serious art as being that far apart.
Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism.
Failing, and learning from it, is necessary. Unil you've done it, you're missing an important piece of your creative arsenal.
Nothing is more terrifying to me, really, than the status quo. I'll make mistakes before I keep doing something the same way.
I often say that in making dances I can make a world where I think things are done morally, done democratically, done honestly.
In dreams, anything can be anything, and everybody can do. We can fly, we can turn upside down, we can transform into anything.
A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I'm beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.
In the future, I will make certain that I commit to projects so there's enough breathing space for me to have an emotional life.
I'm often asked, 'Where do you get your ideas?' ...It's like asking, 'Where do you find air to breathe?' Ideas are all around you.
I've always felt compelled to explore range, because, as far as I know, we're only here once. So let's see how much we can encompass.
Obligation is a flimsy base for creativity, way down the list behind passion, courage, instinct, and the desire to do something great.
I think people want very much to simplify their lives enough so that they can control the things that make it possible to sleep at night.
I always find that the best collaborations are when you work with people that know what they're doing, and you leave them alone to do it.
You may wonder which came first: the skill or the hard work. But that's a moot point. The Zen master cleans his own studio. So should you.
Desire is the first thing a modern dancer should have. Skill can be developed. But if you don't have desire as a modern dancer, forget it.
People often say to me, 'I don't know anything about dance.' I say, 'Stop. You got up this morning, and you're walking. You are an expert.'
Walt Disney was a master of the human psychology. His sense of timing, sense of speed. In a sense, those cartoons are like Rorschach tests.