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Dance constitutes a true recapturing of... freedom and childish play.

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
Childish
Constitutes
Dance
Freedom
True
Play

More quotes by Agnes de Mille

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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.
Agnes de Mille
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We can't stand silence, because silence induces thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
Agnes de Mille
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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.
Agnes de Mille
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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.
Agnes de Mille
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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.
Agnes de Mille
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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.
Agnes de Mille
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No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
Agnes de Mille
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The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
Agnes de Mille
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I want one word on my tombstone - dancer.
Agnes de Mille
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Then I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down... and kissed him. And the world cracked open.
Agnes de Mille
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There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.
Agnes de Mille
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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.
Agnes de Mille
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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.
Agnes de Mille
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Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
Agnes de Mille
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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.
Agnes de Mille
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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.
Agnes de Mille
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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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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.
Agnes de Mille
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Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.
Agnes de Mille
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Dance in the body you have.
Agnes de Mille