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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
Education
Calf
Better
Calves
Good
Harmful
Ballet
Dancer
Dance
Usually
Head

More quotes by Agnes de Mille

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The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
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Living is a form of not being sure, not know what next or how... The artists never entirely knows.
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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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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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I learned three important things in college-to use a library, to memorize quickly and visually, to drop asleep at any time given a horizontal surface and fifteen minutes. What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule.
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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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No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
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No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.
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I want one word on my tombstone - dancer.
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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.
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Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
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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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Dancing is such a despised and dishonored trade that if you tell a doctor or a laywer you do choreography he'll look at you as if you were a hummingbird. Dancers don't get invited to visit people. It is assumed a boy dancer will run off with the spoons and a girl with the head of the house.
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Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.
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There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.
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Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.
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Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times.
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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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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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Dancers aren't made of their technique, but their passion.
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