The rewards of dancing are very different from choreographing.
I started formal piano training when I was 4. From there I had little violas, and I had dancing lessons of every sort and description, and painting lessons. I had German. And shorthand.
The necessity to constantly turn in an excellent performance, to be absolutely wedded to this dedication and this ideal means that as a child you're going to pay for it personally.
There are so few people who can really take hold of art and sort of eat and chew it up. Somehow it's got to be held special, sacred in a corner, and if you don't do the same thing with it, if you're not equally reverential, serious, and pompous about it, well, then you're not a great artist. Who needs that?
I am fairly concise when I work and I work quickly because I think work is done better in a high gear than done our in a gear when everyone's exhausted. Get focused, do it!
I had to become the greatest choreographer of my time. That was my mission, and that's what I set out to do.
A tough manager will have realistic quotas for his employees that he keeps to himself and aggressively stretch quotas, anywhere from ten percent higher to a lot more, which he imposes on his staff. If his people miss the stretch numbers but exceed the realistic goals, he's happy. If he's a superb manager, he knows how far they can stretch without breaking.
I was privileged to be able to study a year with Martha Graham, the last year she was teaching.
In terms of individuals who actually inspired me, very few of the academic people that I had access to had that power over me. Maybe it's simply because I wasn't that committed to geometry.
I think Tolstoy had an unbelievably complicated relationship with women.
This is the hard part. Knowing and admitting a problem are not the same as solving it. But executing a solution is also the fun part, because the solution save you and gets you moving again.
I have not wanted to intimidate audiences. I have not wanted my dancing to be an elitist form. That doesn't mean I haven't wanted it to be excellent.
I don't think that scheduling is uncreative. I think that structure is required for creativity.
There is obviously a power and a truth in action that doesn't lie, which words easily can do.
In those days, male dancers were a rarer breed than women. as they are still today, A good male dancer, one as strong as we were, was very difficult to come by if you couldn't afford to pay them.
The blank space can be humbling. But I've faced it my whole professional life. It's my job. It's also my calling. Bottom line: Filling this empty space constitutes my identity.
I never studied with Balanchine, but his work was very important to me.
I have a sort of tactility about music. I go into record stores and just run my fingers over it, the spines.
In the not-for-profit world, there can be wastefulness because there's not the desperate urgency of when you're on a clock.
I understand things that are American, for better or worse.
Modern dancers should be doing things no one else is doing, and it should come from the gut.
I was fortunate to love men, so I could put them on stage and make roles for them, and move through their bodies in a way that they enjoy doing...
A young person has to start making decisions for themselves at a much earlier age than an overbearing parent allows one.
The great ones never take fundamentals for granted.
I began ear training when I was about six months old. My mother was a concert pianist, and she started all of her children with music before they were a year old. Then she began to see that I had a musical gift...
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