You can be Eastern or Burmese or what have you, but the function of the body and the awareness of the body results in dance and you become a dancer, not just a human being.
Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
The body is shaped, disciplined, honored, and in time, trusted.
The past is not dead; it is not even past. People live on inner time; the moment in which a decisive thought or feeling takes place can be at any time. Timeless feelings are common to all of us.
First we have to believe, and then we believe.
We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.
Art is eternal for it reveals the inner landscape which is the soul of man.
No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
Nothing is more revealing than movement.
The only sin is mediocrity.
You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice.
I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It’s permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable.
Dance is the hidden language of the soul of the body.
It takes ten years, usually, to make a dancer. It takes ten years of handling the instrument, handling the material with which you are dealing, for you to know it completely.
It’s what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.
Dancing is a very living art. It is essentially of the moment, although a very old art. A dancer’s art is lived while he is dancing. Nothing is left of his art except the pictures and the memories – when his dancing days are over.
Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.
Modern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.
It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.