Choreographer Quotes

Isadora Duncan

Gene Kelly

George Balanchine

Mikhail Baryshnikov

Vaslav Nijinsky

Mary Wigman

Alvin Ailey

Ballet is the one place where art flourishes because of a woman; woman is the goddess, the poetess, the muse. That is why I have a company with beautiful girl dancers.

George Balanchine

I want to bring in 'da noise. I want to bring in 'da funk.

For many years, I felt that no matter what I did, what ballet I made, how beautifully I danced, it was not good enough.... That's one of the worst things about racism, what it does to young people. It tears down your insides so that no matter what you achieve, no matter what you write or choreograph, you feel it's not quite enough. You're not quite up to snuff.

When I'm taking my last breath, I want to look at how I used up the best of myself. How much did I sweat, push, pull, rip, fall, hit, crash, explode?...My dream is to be so well-used that in my last-half second, I just burst into dust.

Elizabeth Streb

When it came to the stylish and graceful art of ballroom dancing, my dad was a king of the clubs, a prowling tiger and a wonderfully natural mover.

Sometimes at night I slipped into the studio and worked myself up into a rhythmic intoxication to come closer to the slowly rising character. I could feel how everything pointed toward a clearly defined dance figure. The richness of rhythmic ideas was overwhelming

Dance form is logical, but it is all in the realm of feeling, sensitivity and imagination...

Birth is the beginning of physical life and death is the end of it. But the essential energy of existence (Da) continues beyond physical life. Both life and death simply exist and are two sides of the same coin of existence.

Look at life all around; everything is growing, everything is moving forward. Therefore I recommend keeping in touch with life and with art.

Agrippina Vaganova

I want to dance always, to be good and not evil, and when it is all over not to have the feeling that I might have done better.

The height of artistic skill is to know how to conceal the mechanical effort and strain beneath harmonious calm.

August Bournonville

You know, I never planned to leave. I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. You know, I played their game, pretending, of course. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB... Horrifying.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

You don't have a really good idea until you combine two little ideas.

On being asked if there might be a future for nude dancing:

No. You see there are portions of the human anatomy which would keep swinging after the music had finished.

Robert Helpmann

There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.

This city is a completely female city. Female town. Beijing is male. All rough and politics. Shanghai is more delicate. Money talks. Beautiful. I had enough rough. I need details. Specially because (I am) a lady. I need city.

I am committed to using technology in my dances but not for the purpose of making a comment on technology, but rather to use it as a tool to express the human condition. I think that there are many disadvantages to using technology, it is expensive, difficult to set up and can steal the show by drawing too much attention away from the dance. I love the beauty and the simplicity of a warm body moving without frills, but I think technology is part of our common language now and to not create a relationship with it in dance seems like ignoring a vital tool for connection.

People like eccentrics and they will therefore leave me alone, saying that I am a "mad clown."

Vaslav Nijinsky

Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat.

Dancers have more bones than most people and on the days when you work hard you are sure that you have somehow accumulated more bones than you started with.

I see only the ideal. But no ideals have ever been fully successful on this earth.

Enjoy the journey. Enjoy the journey, and the hard work and the sacrifices and opportunities it takes to get somewhere, because it will all make you better at what you do when you arrive.

Tabitha and Napoleon D'umo