Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.
Dance is the hidden langauge of the soul, of the body.
Choreography is simpler than you think. Just go and do, and don't think so much about it. Just make something interesting.
Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
The body says what words cannot.
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.
God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it - from what I see, from what the dancers can do, from what others do.
Dances without purpose have false starts and stops.
Good choreography fuses eye, ear and mind.
I often say that in making dances I can make a world where I think things are done morally, done democratically, done honestly.
I think Balanchine and Robbins talk to God and when I call, he's out to lunch.
I'm not interested in a group of people with some sort of incredible homogeny,a group that can do the movement I want. I'm interested in people whocan take the movement somewhere.
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
A choreographic idea flows only as fast as the initiator can communicate it to bodies and see them realize it.
Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
Technique is what you fall back on when you run out of inspiration.
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.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.
I see dance being used as communication between body and soul, to express what it too deep to find for words.
Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made.
or simply:
