Top 112 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Choreographers - Page 2

I work as a dancer, but I also work as a choreographer with couples that have a lot of tension between them, and as dancer and as a choreographer, being in this situation is very difficult. You see the energy doesn't flow, and it's very tense.

The serious is the most difficult branch of dancing, it requires a close study, and cannot be duly appreciated but by connoisseurs and men of a refined and pure taste. She who excels in it deserves the highest applause. A correct execution of an adagio is the ne plus ultra of our art; I look on it as the touchstone of the dancer.

If the simple positions of ballet are demonstrated straight on, they seem quite dull and lifeless, but when put on a diagonal, they begin to take on all kinds of possibilities.

The artistic path is a fearless occupation.

The beauty to which the Dance ought to aspire

Walk into a room, knowing you are somebody, somebody special. Don't ever let them smash that or pull you down.

My ideas come, and there is a deep desire to create. Sometimes it's stronger than me. Sometimes I have to do projects that I know are almost impossible but I still have to do them. It's like a muscle - if you are a dancer, you need to dance, if you are a creative person, you need to create. It's part of your life.

I like large sounds and very complex sonorities, and I also tend to opt for creating a feeling of vast space. I could achieve this effect either by using a symphony orchestra, which for a dance piece is pretty much impossible these days, or by using a synthesizer on multi-channel tape and a superb sound system, to get that same sensation of expansiveness and depth.

In the dance, one finds the cinema, the comic strips, the Olympic hundred meters and swimming, and what's more, poetry, love and tenderness.

I'm trying to make the perfect dance, that's what drives me.

If your soul dances, your body follows

To change the world, you must first change yourself. And baby, that's hard enough.

I have a lot of actors I want to work with; Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, and Uma Thurman.

I'm not retired, I will continue directing films and doing fight choreography. I won't stop.

The beautiful always retains the freshness of novelty, while the astonishing soon grow tiresome.

Everything in the phenomenal universe is straight line and circle. The horizon, our heads, arms, electrons, the oceans, planets and stars. Their principle function is to radiate. The task of the human being is also to radiate.

My intention was to grapple with the metaphysical meaning behind Scheherazade and present that meaning in its essence. Scheherazade is the symbol of the savior. She weaves tales not to save her own life, but to save humanity from its unending retributive response to injury.

I no longer need to have what I see as the surface of the dance so connected to the underlying structure.

You look for those actors or actresses that fit the personality to populate the film.

"Light Over Water" is the longest piece I have ever composed. It is a landmark in my personal struggle to create large forms. I feel that it is by and large a formally successful work, though I was constrained to write a piece at least fifty minutes long, and there are some dead spots in the music where I think I was simply marking time. However, I think when the dance is in motion, the formal problem is nonexistent.

The Dance can, with the aid of music, rise to the heights of poetry. On the other hand, through an excess of gymnastics it can also degenerate into buffoonery. So-called "difficult" feats can be executed by countless adepts, but the appearance of ease is achieved only by the chosen few.

Be IN it. Get drunk in the moment.

I think professional cosmonaut trainer in fact said that we are the only two [with Damian Kulash ] he found fit to be astronauts, which is ridiculous because we are far from fit from being astronauts. So you can imagine what was going on up there.

Anything that’s too safe is not action.

The world loves a clone and a good knock-off. It cheats the artist... In the obsession for technical wizardry, people disappear; and if your voice isn't present in a relationship, you don't matter.

The diagonal gives a three-dimensional feeling to dancers that cannot be achieved when they are only front and back. On the diagonal, more movement is automatically visible.

You are the only one of you. From the beginning of time till the end of this world to the end of eternity. There's only one of you ever created. Ev-er. You are the only you. That's pretty powerful. So why on earth would you want to look like anybody else, dress like anyone else, dance like anyone else, be someone else, when you are a legend in your own right?

We dance with women in groups, but it is very rare that you have a partner that is a woman. The dance world is very macho - woman, boy, always couples, and it's very standardized.

Guilt, remorse. It's what separates us from the animals.

Are you a stingy breather? Well, don't be. Be extravagant with you breathing and come fully alive.

With dancers, we are all the time dancing with somebody else. It happens often that you meet a new dancer or you have a new partner. But what is true is that sometimes, when you dance with some people, there is not the right feeling.

Whoever finds that they're not prepared to give their all should draw the inescapable conclusion from that and stop.

So many dancers feel that what they look like is more important than who they are. This is a real danger for dancers who focus for years on appearances and think of themselves as merely a body. The choreographer can't work with them in the realm of ideas. It's a huge problem if they haven't been connecting internally. If they've decided that what's inside is of little value, they can only try to approximate some kind of look.

Dances without purpose have false starts and stops.

I look at my career and I feel like I haven’t even started yet. I feel like I haven’t even begun to shift the planet. But I’m so excited because Rock of Ages is one of the first steps of that new phase in my life.

What's so wonderful about ballet is that it's mind-driven physicality. It's almost a Greek ideal of body, mind, and form.

The height of artistic skill is to know how to conceal the mechanical effort and strain beneath harmonious calm.

The beauty of art is that there are no rules

The purpose of art is higher than art. What we are really interested in are masterpieces of humanity.

Art is a form of intelligence, it can be developed, it's linked to intuition and it's something that all humans have

I love costumes in dance, I think it's very important. The clothes for dancing not only make you feel like somebody else, but it makes you move in a different way.

Joy is a strength; intoxication, a weakness.

You have to get beyond the barrier of self-protection before you can really fly.

I am just a choreographer, and I am trying to make productions, not dance concerts.

The beauty to which the Dance ought to aspire is not dependent upon taste or pleasure, but is founded on the immutable laws of Nature.

Mannerism is not character, and affectation is the avowed enemy of grace. Every dancer ought to regard his laborious art as a link in the chain of beauty, as a useful ornament for the stage, and this, in turn, as an important element in the spiritual development of nations.

The invention progress is tough sometimes. When I first choreographed the Drunken Master in the past with Jackie Chan, I spent months to create the whole sequence. There were no fight sequences before; it's just a name. I have to choreograph it all by myself.

It's surprisingly difficult to build fake overhead bins, especially ones that, you know, you can open really easily - because when you're floating around, you don't have any traction, obviously.

Skip your brain and go right to the gut.

My investigation of movement has led me to choices which vary from traditional norms. My dancers and I see the rehearsal as a laboratory for testing scientific principles on the body. We invent action ideas which we think are archetypal, noticeable, understandable. The outcome is a mixture of slam dancing, exquisite and amazing human flight and a wild action sport which captures kids, older people and the general public’s hearts and minds and bodies.

Women should set themselves forth attractively but innocently, like a cat. A cat is never a presentation, but an innocent happening.

We are all miracles. What we do with the miracle is our choice.