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I studied the way I danced- to the point of dropping.

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
Danced
Dropping
Studied
Study
Point
Way

More quotes by Agnes de Mille

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Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times.
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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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Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible
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Dance constitutes a true recapturing of... freedom and childish play.
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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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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.
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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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Dance in the body you have.
Agnes de Mille
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I want one word on my tombstone - dancer.
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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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Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.
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No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.
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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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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The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
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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No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
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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Living is a form of not being sure, not know what next or how... The artists never entirely knows.
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