March 2012
61 posts
“What is expressive in a dance is not the dancer’s opinions, psychological, political, or moral. It isn’t even what she thinks about episodes in her private life. What is expressive in dancing is the way she moves about the stage, the way she exhibits her body in motion.”
—Edwin Denby
“An art process in not essentially a natural process; it is an invented one. It can take actions of organization from the way nature functions, but essentially man invents the process. And from or for that process he derives a discipline to make and keep the process functioning. That discipline too is not a natural process. The daily discipline, the continued keeping of the elasticity of the muscles, the continued control of the mind over the body’s actions, the constant hoped-for flow of the spirit into physical movement, both new and renewed, is not a natural way. It is unnatural in its demands on all the sources of energy. But the final synthesis can be a natural one, natural in the sense that the mind, body and spirit function as one.”
—Merce Cunningham
“The choreographer cannot deliberately make a ballet to appeal to an audience, he has to start from personal inspirations. He has to trust the ballet, to let it stand on its own strengths or fall on its weaknesses. If it reaches the audience, then he is lucky that round!”
—Gerald Arpino
“So many dances leave me untouched, unmoved. A dancer should be able to raise an arm and make someone cry—in the way Isadora Duncan did. It is a necessity for any art to move you.”
—Pauline Koner
“I would like to make it clear from the start that these dances are primarily meant to be a kind of food for the eye. If they evoke dramatic images and riddles, the key to their solution lies not so much in the brain, but in the senses and the eye of the spectator.”
—Paul Taylor
February 2012
61 posts
“One is born to be a dancer. No teacher can work miracles, nor will years of training make a good dancer of an untalented pupil. One may be able to acquire a certain technical facility, but no one can ever ‘acquire an exceptional talent.’ I have never prided myself on having an unusually gifted pupil. A Pavlova is no one’s pupil but God’s.”
—George Balanchine
“I do everything I know how in a dance.”
—Twyla Tharp
“Dancing should look easy; like an optical illusion. It should seem effortless. When you do a difficult variation, the audience is aware that it is demanding and that you have the power and strength to do it. But in the end, when you take your bow, you should look as if you were saying, ‘Oh, it was nothing. I could do it again.’”
—Bruce Marks
“Ballet technique is arbitrary and very difficult. It never becomes easy—it becomes possible. The effort involved in making a dancer’s body is so long and relentless, in many instances painful, the effort to maintain the technique so grueling that unless a certain satisfaction is derived from the disciplining and the punishing, the pace could not be maintained.”
—Agnes de Mille
“There are three steps you have to complete to become a professional dancer: learn to dance, learn to perform, and learn how to cope with injuries.”
—David Gere
“The simple pleasure of moving and living through one’s body is what I think matters most here. And the pleasure of dancing with someone in a spontaneous, unplanned way, free to create without disturbing one’s partner. It’s an extremely inspiring form of dance.”
—Steve Paxton
“Dance is bigger than the physical body. When you extend your arm, it doesn’t stop at the end of your fingers, because you’re dancing bigger than that; you’re dancing spirit.”
—Judith Jamison
“I believe that dance communicates man’s deepest, highest and most truly spiritual thoughts and emotions far better than words, spoken or written.”
—Ted Shawn
“By the end of it, you never know how it’s going to turn out. Hopefully if I pick the right songs and put the right melodies on it and all the collaboration works out. it’s a win-win situation.”
—Paul Taylor
“The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie.”
—Agnes de Mille (via meredithcollegedance)
