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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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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
World
Leaned
Cracked
Kissed
Simplest
Kissing
Lips
Open
Thing

More quotes by Agnes de Mille

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Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
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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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The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
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No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.
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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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Dancers aren't made of their technique, but their passion.
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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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A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.
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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.
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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.
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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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There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.
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Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times.
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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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Living is a form of not being sure, not know what next or how... The artists never entirely knows.
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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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No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
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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.
Agnes de Mille