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A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.

Agnes de Mille

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Agnes de Mille
Age: 88 †
Born: 1905
Born: September 18
Died: 1993
Died: October 6
Ballet Dancer
Ballet Master
Choreographer
Dancer
Theatrical Director
Harlem
New York
Good
Harmful
Ballet
Dancer
Dance
Usually
Head
Education
Calf
Better
Calves

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Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
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Dancers aren't made of their technique, but their passion.
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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.
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My heroines are part of me and my heroes are part of what I'd like to know.
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Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible
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We can't stand silence, because silence induces thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
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One of the good things about my having some recognition is that I can do something for the people I think ought to have more and correct some of the matters fate fails to take care of.
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If you want to understand a nation, look at its dances and listen to its folk songs - don't pay any attention to its politicians.
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To make up a dance, I still need, as I needed then, a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea.
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No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
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Dance in the body you have.
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To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.
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Theater people are always pining and agonizing because they're afraid that they'll be forgotten. And in America they're quite right. They will be.
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The practice mirror is to be used for the correction of faults, not for a love affair, and the figure you watch should not become your dearest friend.
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Dance constitutes a true recapturing of... freedom and childish play.
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Ours is an upbeat, a hurried, hasty beat. It keeps pressing us to go farther, to include everything so that we can savor everything, so that we can know everything, so that we will miss nothing. Partly it's greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.
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The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
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The choreographic process is exhausting. It happens on one's feet after hours of work, and the energy required is roughly the equivalent of writing a novel and winning a tennis match simultaneously.
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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.
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The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
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