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

More quotes by Agnes de Mille

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Dancers aren't made of their technique, but their passion.
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Then I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down... and kissed him. And the world cracked open.
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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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I studied the way I danced- to the point of dropping.
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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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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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There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.
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The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
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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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A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.
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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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Living is a form of not being sure, not know what next or how... The artists never entirely knows.
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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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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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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 want one word on my tombstone - dancer.
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Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
Agnes de Mille