Agnes de Mille Dance Quotations

The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.

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.

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.

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.

A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.

Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times.

To make up a dance, I still need, as I needed then, a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea.

Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.

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.

Dance constitutes a true recapturing of... freedom and childish play.

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.

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.

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.

Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible

But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises. In the same way the lifted leg of an arabesque becomes a wing, and not a mechanical leverage like a raised trap door. This is the precise difference between dancing and acrobatics. The dancer tries to express something; the acrobat merely pulls, raises, stretches and grinds. The acrobat is lost in a web of muscles the dancer is all but invisible in projected idea.

Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.