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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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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
Nation
Folk
Nations
Politicians
Attention
Folks
Politician
Understand
Dance
Song
Songs
Look
Pay
Looks
Listen
Dances

More quotes by 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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Dancers aren't made of their technique, but their passion.
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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Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
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No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.
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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
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Dance constitutes a true recapturing of... freedom and childish play.
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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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
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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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A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.
Agnes de Mille
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I studied the way I danced- to the point of dropping.
Agnes de Mille
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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.
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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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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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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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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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
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Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.
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