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.
We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.
Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing.
I use the words gods and goddesses principally, I think, to mean beautiful bodies – bodies that are absolute instruments. And I believe in discipline, I believe in a very definite technique.
You see, when weaving a blanket, an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out.
The world I’m interested in is the one where things are not named.
I’m asked so often whether I believe in life after death. I do believe in the sanctity of life, the continuity of life and of energy. I know the anonymity of death has no appeal for me. It is the now that I must face and want to face.