Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm an emotional eater. If something's worth celebrating, we're going to grab pizza. If it's going bad, girl, pass me the chocolate. Gotta keep it in check!
I love working with Alicia Keys, because it's not just the ability to do the dance to me; I think it's the ability to interpret it that excites me the most.
Dancers have more bones than most people and on the days when you work hard you are sure that you have somehow accumulated more bones than you started with.
The universe lies before you on the floor, in the air, in the mysterious bodies of your dancers, in your mind. From this voyage no one returns poor or weary.
We talk too much of black art when we should be talking about art, just art. Black composers must be free to write rondos and fugues, not only protest songs.
We can't afford big symphonies but we commission works that sound rich and symphonic because of the nature of the instrumentation and the people we work with.
So, I think I would say, enjoy the process of learning to dance. The process of our profession, and not its final achievement, is the heart and soul of dance.
A country like Belgium, or socialist countries in central Europe spend more money on art education than the United States, which is a really puzzling thought.
I feel an obligation to use black dancers because there must be more opportunities for them, but not because I'm a black choreographer talking to black people.
Keep your mind open about what you want to do and be true to yourself. So many people are governed by what's 'in' or copy something that someone else has done.
Sometimes you don't know what you've got until you put it in front of an audience - and the enthusiasm for the show from the audience has been just incredible.
I want to play Martin Luther King. I want to tell the real story, his demons, his struggles as a man, not just as a hero but fallible, I want to show that side.
Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. It's the rhythm of your life. It's the expression in time and movement,in happiness, joy, sadness and envy.
The body is a sacred garment. It's your first and last garment; it is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor.
I saw the Nutcracker to be a dummy as I thought of its mouth moving like a nutcracker - and also find them pretty scary as they almost have a life of their own.
There are three things I commit to on a daily basis: Exercising for an hour a day, tops. Never skipping meals. And accepting the size and shape I was born with.
When I dance I am really meditating rather then performing for an audience. I am completely absorbed by the music and the steps I choose to respond to the music.
Why are you stingy with yourselves? Why are you holding back? What are you saving for - for another time? There are no other times. There is only now. Right now.
A dancer must listen to his body and pay homage to it. Behind the movement lies this terrible, driving passion, this necessity. I won't settle for anything less.
I'm not completely trained in any one area - I'm not a tap person or a ballet person. I don't have a big back-up of steps; I can't just fall back on what I know.
My influences change all the time; they have to remain current, because they're the things that capture your imagination and make you want to go into the studio.
My mum was ill when I was originally making 'Edward Scissorhands' in 2005. I was virtually visiting her every night after rehearsals, and she never got to see it.
I love costumes in dance, I think it's very important. The clothes for dancing not only make you feel like somebody else, but it makes you move in a different way.
For me it was really important to get the essence out of the music for the story and not, sort of, press the music into the service of the whimsical telling of it.
The relationship between the audience and the dancers goes through many different stages. Someone seeing my work for the first time may or may not pick up on that.
I had had to learn the difference between the bearable fatigue and the unbearable, the fatigue of fear. The first can be cured by a night's sleep; the second kills.
Movement should be approached like life - with enthusiasm, joy and gratitude - for movement is life, and life is movement, and we get out of it what we put into it.
In America they like my spicy TV alter ego, probably because there were a lot of Italians and Hispanics in the country, but the real L.A. life is a hard-working one.
My company is known for being funny as well as moving. You get a bit of everything in these shows. I think people know they're going to have a surprising experience.
What brought me to the theater, no matter you're a Jew or a Russian or Armenian or Latvian, are suddenly illuminated by stage light and one beautiful image of dance.
I can say with full sincerity that I am happy. I'm happy because I'm doing what I love and I'm not selling out. And I can sleep at night because I'm at peace with it.
It's one of the things that looks good written down, but the reality is that you think about the pieces you're doing and try to bear in mind everyone in the audience.
Be. Good. To yourself, to other people, to everything you do. It's a norm of life by which people should try to live. Don't waste time. Be interesting and interested.
I never want to have to take certain roles, because I want to maintain a certain level of artistic credibility. But sometimes you're forced to do things for the money.
Unlike a lot of choreographers, I don't always start with the music. I often start with a visual artist, and then find music that fits the world of that visual artist.
If I had to reflect on the finest classical male ballet dancers of my time, Vladimir Vasiliev of the Bolshoi and the Danish dancer Eric Bruhn were, I feel, without peer.
I believe it's extremely important to include some other type of fitness activity in your training, so cross training will help you to avoid injury when you are dancing.
As a dancer, obviously, we are all inspired by Michael Jackson, and I always looked up to Gene Kelly. He was a bigger version of Fred Astaire, and he was amazing as well.
I can go back to when I was six years old. I was always getting in trouble for dreaming, and the things I got in trouble for dreaming then are the things I'm doing today.
What do dancers think of Fred Astaire? It's no secret. We hate him. He gives us a complex because he's too perfect. His perfection is an absurdity. It's too hard to face.
Once I moved to London I thought it was unbeatable. I work a lot in L.A. and love it, but would never give up London. It's a true world city, with an energy that's unique.
I was struggling with drugs, I had a lot on my plate, and you know, I was using unhealthy ways to kind of self-medicate and deal with a lot of heavy duty stuff in my life.
If the year 2000 can help us move into the future, that's fine, but I am afraid that people see it as a full stop and that one can take a big breath afterwards - you can't.
You can be Eastern or Burmese or what have you, but the function of the body and the awareness of the body results in dance and you become a dancer, not just a human being.
Everyone is your best friend when you are successful. Make sure that the people that you surround yourself with are also the people that you are not afraid of failing with.
Who am I? I'm a man; an American, a father, a teacher, but most of all, I am a person who knows how the arts can change lives, because they transformed mine. I was a dancer.
Who am I? I'm a man, an American, a father, a teacher, but most of all, I am a person who knows how the arts can change lives, because they transformed mine. I was a dancer.
The diagonal gives a three-dimensional feeling to dancers that cannot be achieved when they are only front and back. On the diagonal, more movement is automatically visible.
Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery - what it all means, the way the little bone near the ankle relates itself to the floor for a perfect stance, a perfect plie.
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.