Merce Cunningham Quotes

• You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls .

  Merce Cunningham

  Dance, Wall, Museums

  Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, Bill T. Jones, Walker Art Center (1998). “Art performs life: Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, Bill T. Jones”

  145 Copy quote

• There's no thinking involved in my choreography... I don't work through images or ideas. I work through the body... If the dancer dances, which is not the same as having theories about dancing or wishing to dance or trying to dance, everything is there. When I dance, it means: this is what I am doing.

  Merce Cunningham

  Dance, Mean, Thinking

  138 Copy quote

• Dancing is a spiritual exercise in a physical form.

  Merce Cunningham

  Spiritual, Exercise, Dancing

  Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, Bill T. Jones, Walker Art Center (1998). “Art performs life: Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, Bill T. Jones”

  68 Copy quote

• I think of dance as a constant transformation of life itself.

  Merce Cunningham

  Dance, Thinking, Transformation

  Merce Cunningham, Jacqueline Lesschaeve (1985). “The Dancer and the Dance”, Marion Boyars

  67 Copy quote

• The only way to do it is to do it.

  Merce Cunningham

  Dance, Dancing, Way

  Merce Cunningham, Jacqueline Lesschaeve (1985). “The Dancer and the Dance”, Marion Boyars

  88 Copy quote

• I'm not expressing anything. I'm presenting people moving.

  Merce Cunningham

  Moving, People, Presenting

  72 Copy quote

• The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion, the steadfast and willing devotion to the labor that makes the classwork not a gymnastic hour and a half, or at the lowest level, a daily drudgery, but a devotion that allows the classroom discipline to become moments of dancing too.

  Merce Cunningham

  Dance, Ballet Class, Discipline

  97 Copy quote

• Falling is one of the ways of moving.

  Merce Cunningham

  Moving, Fall, Way

  56 Copy quote

• Light or luminosity is created by the way elements are juxtaposed. They become reflective and a radiance comes from putting different things together.

  Merce Cunningham

  Light, Together, Different

  76 Copy quote

• There are no fixed points in space.

  Merce Cunningham

  Space, Fixed

  Merce Cunningham, Jacqueline Lesschaeve (1985). “The Dancer and the Dance”, Marion Boyars

  43 Copy quote

• The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion.

  Merce Cunningham

  Dance, Discipline, Dancing

  43 Copy quote

• Anything can feed you, depending on the way you look at it.

  Merce Cunningham

  Looks, Way

  37 Copy quote

• I was told that I had to give grades to the students, which I wasn't particularly interested in doing.

  Merce Cunningham

  Giving, Students, Grades

  26 Copy quote

• You have to love dancing to stick to it.

  Merce Cunningham

  Dancing, Sticks

  Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, Bill T. Jones, Walker Art Center (1998). “Art performs life: Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, Bill T. Jones”

  24 Copy quote

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