The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.
In dreams, anything can be anything, and everybody can do. We can fly, we can turn upside down, we can transform into anything.
I walk into a large white room. It’s a dance studio in midtown Manhattan. The room is clean, virtually spotless if you don’t count the thousands of skid marks and footprints left there by dancers rehearsing. Other than the mirrors, the boom box, the skid marks, and me, the room is empty.
I would have to challenge the term, modern dance. I don’t really use that term in relation to my work. I simply think of it as dancing. I think of it as moving.
Dancing is like bank robbery, it takes split-second timing.
Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism.
I do everything I know how in a dance.
To make real change, you have to be well anchored – not only in the belief that it can be done, but also in some pretty real ways about who you are and what you can do.
A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I’m beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.
The content and thematic materials of dance is, of itself, like boxing. You play tennis and baseball. But boxing is not a sport you play: you stand up and do it.
It is extremely arrogant and very foolish to think that you can ever outwit your audience.
Judgment is not my business. Existing is my business.
The routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightening bold of inspiration, maybe more. And this routine is available to everyone.
Milos Forman is a great director, Jim Brooks is a wonderful writer and director.
I’m willing to be regarded as a tyrant to keep my vision intact.
The thing about creativity is, people are going to laugh at it. Get over it.
I work because I have issues and questions and feelings and thoughts that I want to have a look at. I’m not in need of, or wanting, particularly, to know what other folk are up to.
You only need one good reason to commit to an idea, not four hundred. But if you have four hundred reasons to say yes and one reason to say no, the answer is probably no.
I have the wherewithal to challenge myself for my entire life. That’s a great gift.
Before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box.