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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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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
Face
Faces
Thought
Would
Thinking
Induces
Silence
Stand

More quotes by Agnes de Mille

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Dance in the body you have.
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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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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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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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No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.
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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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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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Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
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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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No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
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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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The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
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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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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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Dance constitutes a true recapturing of... freedom and childish play.
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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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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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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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There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.
Agnes de Mille
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The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
Agnes de Mille