Quote

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

Agnes de Mille

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

Image
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
Image
Living is a form of not being sure, not know what next or how... The artists never entirely knows.
Agnes de Mille
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Agnes de Mille
Image
Dancers aren't made of their technique, but their passion.
Agnes de Mille
Image
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
Image
The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
Agnes de Mille
Image
Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
Agnes de Mille
Image
Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible
Agnes de Mille
Image
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.
Agnes de Mille
Image
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.
Agnes de Mille
Image
I want one word on my tombstone - dancer.
Agnes de Mille
Image
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
Image
My heroines are part of me and my heroes are part of what I'd like to know.
Agnes de Mille
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Dance in the body you have.
Agnes de Mille
Image
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
Image
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.
Agnes de Mille