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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.

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
Hours
Ballet
Process
Match
Energy
Required
Happens
Tennis
Writing
Dance
Roughly
Work
Novel
Simultaneously
Feet
Exhausting
Winning
Equivalent

More quotes by Agnes de Mille

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No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.
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Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times. The dancers don't even look at one another. They are just a lot of isolated individuals jiggling in a kind of self-hypnosis and dancing with others only to remind themselves that we are not completely alone in this world.
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Dance in the body you have.
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Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.
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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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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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Dance constitutes a true recapturing of... freedom and childish play.
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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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Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.
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Find the passion. It takes great passion and great energy to do anything creative. I would go so far as to say you can't do it without that passion.
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Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
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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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My heroines are part of me and my heroes are part of what I'd like to know.
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A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.
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Dancers aren't made of their technique, but their passion.
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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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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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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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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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No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
Agnes de Mille