Top 47 Choreographers Quotes & Sayings

We dance to difference genres such as krumping, ballet and hip-hop, together with invited foreign choreographers who are well-known internationally.

We are just at the studio, me and my choreographers, we are spending like 30 nights and we are thinking, what is my next dance move? Because in Korea there are huge expectations about my dancing. So it was a lot of pressure.

I get a lot of credit for Tron. They called us scene choreographers back then because the animation unit wouldn't let us be called animators because we were working on computers. And we were some of the first people ever to make 3-D computer animation.

As a dancer I had worked with really hard choreographers, Jerome Robbins being the toughest. And you learned what it is to hit against a brick wall. And you learned pretty quickly to go around the wall or say, "I can't take this job."

The mystery of Christopher Wheeldon deepens. Yes, he's the most talented of the younger ballet choreographers - indeed, where's the competition? Yes, he's particularly good at nurturing dancers and identifying their essential qualities.

City Ballet has to develop choreographers of stature and a new approach to coaching before everything we value about it fades away and, in the great tradition of the Cheshire Cat, there's nothing left but Peter Martins' smile.

It's normal; Arab women have always been very active at the forefront of culture - as film producers since the 1920s; as singers, dancers, choreographers, writers for much longer than that.

Dance in the most perishable of the arts. Ballets are forgotten, ballerinas retire, choreographers die--and what remains of that glorious production which so excited us a decade ago, a year ago, or even last night?

What makes people and companies and artistic directors and choreographers interested in working with dancers is the ability to kind of let go of everything you think you know and be a blank canvas.

The one reason people don't take dance seriously is because a lot of choreographers don't take dance seriously.

In a musical, I believe that choreographers are under a great deal of pressure. There's not always the freedom to do what you want to do, because if it ends up being too long the dance breaks are the first thing that will go, because you can't make the story shorter.

We learnt a lot because we got in with real choreographers who tell you what they need from a song, because a song has to advance the story. Then real directors like Mike Nichols tell you where you can have 'B themes' and 'C themes', and we go oh yes, B themes and C themes! So we were taught in the finest school amongst the finest people. And also by the school of experience.

What guarantees - or at least semi-guarantees - good ballets is good choreographers, and they are thin on the ground.

Michael Bennett, Tommy Tune and Agnes de Mille fought to be director-choreographers. They were just not going to do it any other way because the choreographer is so often at the bottom of the creative totem pole when you put a show together. So with that power you get a more direct point-of-view and that helps something called style.

Choreographers tend to treat ballet dancers like kids they can manipulate.

It is said that the Devil has all the best tunes. This is broadly true. But Heaven has the best choreographers

The people that have inspired me the most were dancers and choreographers. Even growing up, if I dealt with any pressure to be a certain way, I knew that as an artistic lane, dancing was the one that was a little more freed up - like, no one in my family is really doing that; I can be that person.

The number of e-mails and letters that I get from choreographers, from sculptors, from composers who are being inspired by science is huge.

Shakespeare has always been up for grabs, and choreographers have every right to use him any way they choose.

That's one of the main things I do, work with choreographers. I've been doing it a long time, and it's a real important part of my life as a soundmaker, making music for dance.

You cannot dance physically certain things. But look at tango dancers or flamenco or Japanese classical theater. You can, if you're smart enough and you collaborate with the right choreographers, you could really dance your age.

I know a lot of choreographers prefer to do abstract dance and not be bothered with a story, but even when I'm asked to do classical ballet or a modern piece, I still want to tell a story.

I have the most respect for Zach Woodlee. He is one of my favorite - and one of the most capable - choreographers out there right now.

For most of human history, we could only watch, like bystanders, the beautiful dance of Nature. But today, we are on the cusp of an epoch-making transition, from being passive observers of Nature to being active choreographers of Nature. The Age of Discovery in science is coming to a close, opening up an Age of Mastery.

Some choreographers have been cautious about working with me.

Choreographers use me as the old guy who still dances. Not that I put on white tights.

There are as many types of Butoh as there are Butoh choreographers.

I loved being at the Royal Ballet. Those choreographers, MacMillan and Ashton, they knew how to translate complicated life into choreography.

One of the eternal mysteries of ballet is how untalented choreographers find backers for their work, and then find good dancers to perform in it. Is it irresistible charm? Chutzpah? Pure determination? Blackmail? Or are so many supposedly knowledgeable people just plain blind?

It's all cyclical. Sometimes things just come in packs. At one point you had this collection of great choreographers where you would see eight bars and you would know definitely who did it.

All writers, musicians, artists, choreographers/dancers, etc., work with the stuff of their experiences. It's the translation of it, the conversion of it, the shaping of it that makes for the drama.

When we did concerts, we wanted them to be theatrical events - collaborations with designers, choreographers, and directors - because we thought traditional rock concerts were boring.

Mia Michaels is to my mind one of the most interesting choreographers alive right now and my colleague and my friend from So You Think (You Can Dance).

Back in the Bruce Lee era, and in my era, Kung-Fu stirred up a kind of frenzy, and many people were learning martial arts from us. But about a decade ago, Hollywood began bringing in a number of our action choreographers, including two from my own stunt crew, where they became martial arts directors. Now, a decade later, Hollywood has learned it all, so when you look at the action films they're making now, they all use our action, our martial arts, and then add to that their own technology which is ten times better than ours, and it has to leave us dumbfounded: how did they film that?

The people that have inspired me the most were dancers and choreographers.

Unlike a lot of choreographers, I don't always start with the music. I often start with a visual artist, and then find music that fits the world of that visual artist.

Initially, it would bother me when filmmakers, script writers, dialogue writers and choreographers tried to recreate a bit of my dad though me.

It's easier for me to go to Russia and train with top coaches and choreographers there than go to Colorado Springs and train with 14 of my competitors.

You had to give, uh, a lot of consideration to the fact that, uh, the artist had to come back into the mike area and start singing, especially the background singers, you know. And you had to make sure they had a couple of bars of music in order to catch their breath. And uh, in many cases a lot of choreographers didn't give that, uh, the proper thought.

Even as one of the best choreographers in the country, I was criticised for a lot of things I have done in life.

It's kind of become a journey about the dancers, but dancers are the reason why this show is so successful. They are the choreographers, they are the teachers and if not for their hard work, there would be no 'Dancing With the Stars.'

All the Bollywood choreographers are so talented and inspiring. I am learning a lot just by observing their work.

It's like a dance, to choreograph a fight is like a dance. It's very specific. You have to carefully plan it out. Because if someone gets hurt, then we didn't do our job, someone screwed up. The fight choreographers and the actors involved, we messed up somewhere.

I was chosen over British and French choreographers to work on 'Bombay Dreams.'

The way Alvin Ailey has transformed modern dance and dance in general is the fact of variety. It's a cornucopia of ways to move. There are choreographers in the company as - as diverse, as different from each other as Donald McKayle and Bill T. Jones, or Jawole Zollar and John Butler, Lar Lubovitch, you know, and Judith Jamison.

Choreographers, historically, are born, not made - their talents drive them to it.

I don't understand choreographers who say they don't care about the audience or that they would be happy to present their works non-publicly. I think dance is a form of communication and the goal is to dialogue with the audience. If an audience member tells me they cried or that the dance moved them to think about their own journey or a family member's, then the work is successful.