We don't need to illustrate music; music illustrates itself.
I often say that in making dances I can make a world where I think things are done morally, done democratically, done honestly.
Ultimately there is no such thing as failure. There are lessons learned in different ways.
The ultimate point of a piece for me is that it drives the next one. Does it open new doors? That's the success of a piece.
These days, I think we could all agree that having a just-friend is not a bad thing.
At the ballet classes I took when I first came to New York, I would see great dancers like Cynthia Gregory and Lupe Serrano. I would look at them and study what they could do, and what I couldn't do. And then I'd think maybe they should try what I could do.
Well, Mozart is extraordinary not only in that he became virtuoso along the lines of his father, but that he had that compositional gift, that melodic gift. By the time he was four, he was doing piano concertos with harmony in the background.
I have a sort of tactility about music. I go into record stores and just run my fingers over it, the spines.
I work because I have issues and questions and feelings and thoughts that I want to have a look at. I'm not in need of, or wanting, particularly, to know what other folk are up to.
The rewards of dancing are very different from choreographing.
It's very difficult for me to do fund raising for my own organization if I'm working for other companies because sponsors will say, 'Well, hey, man, if she's doing a ballet for Ballet Theatre, we'll give money to Ballet Theatre.'
I'm not interested in seeing dance die. It's not to my advantage. Nor is it to our culture's advantage or anybody else's.
Dance is the most fundamental of all art forms.
To make real change, you have to be well anchored - not only in the belief that it can be done, but also in some pretty real ways about who you are and what you can do.
If a thing moves, it lives.
I don't think politicians should be allowed into power who are not familiar with their bodies, because that's where our bottom line is. And I know that they would make totally different decisions if they felt responsible simply for their own bodies.
I think Tolstoy had an unbelievably complicated relationship with women.
There are very few critics who have historical context or authority.
The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.
I've always felt compelled to explore range, because, as far as I know, we're only here once. So let's see how much we can encompass.
Everything present is included in the past somewhere; nobody's present pops out of nowhere.
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.
Dance has never been a particularly easy life, and everybody knows that.
It is extremely arrogant and very foolish to think that you can ever outwit your audience.
You can only generate ideas when you put pencil to paper, brush to canvas... when you actually do something physical.
Let me put it this way: I would like to direct a successful film. An unsuccessful film I would not like to direct. Films are very difficult.
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 thought I had to make an impact on history. I had to become the greatest choreographer of my time. That was my mission. Posterity deals with us however it sees fit. But I gave it 20 years of my best shot.
People often say to me, 'I don't know anything about dance.' I say, 'Stop. You got up this morning, and you're walking. You are an expert.'
I look for dancers who have all the technique in the world. But they must be dancers who are open-minded, who are willing to forget that they know anything. They also have to be gorgeous; they must have a clear image of themselves and strong personalities.
I find that dancers are only well trained in ballet these days.
When I say I can see through clothes, sometimes I try to use it as an X-ray vision to look into the dancer and see who this dancer is right now, at this exact moment in time. I live inside them in a way.
Things change all the time, so why do people make such a philosophical to-do that things are constantly in transition?
When I started making dances in the '60s, narrative dance was sort of off the radar screen. What was important at the time in the avant-garde was minimalism.
I'm obviously always interested in the dancer who's an athlete and vice versa. I expect dancers to be in condition like an athlete is and to challenge themselves in the same way, to the same physical degree.
I do at least 75 push-ups a day.
My favorite audience is everybody. I worked in a drive-in theater from the time I was 8 years old until I went to college, and I'm accustomed to everybody can buy a ticket and everybody should be taken into account.
When you’re in a rut, you have to question everything except your ability to get out of it.
Unfortunately, I think we've probably all had the experience that if we're in a relationship where one of the partners is doing it 'my' way, that relationship is not going to survive.
If you're speaking of love, you really must include the element of uncertainty - and perhaps it's best approached as the art of constant maintenance.
'The Creative Habit' is basically about how you work alone, how you survive as a solitary artist. 'The Collaborative Habit' is obviously about surviving with other people.
I used to say to myself, 'Well, in the old days everybody danced because they loved to dance, and there was none of this professional garbage going on about how much can you get for this or that or the other, or any of the kinds of things that insecurity can sometimes promote. Sometimes it's for the wrong reasons.'
I think people want very much to simplify their lives enough so that they can control the things that make it possible to sleep at night.
Balzac loved courtesans. They were independent women, and in the 19th century, that was a breed that was just evolving.
If you only do what you know and do it very, very well, chances are that you won't fail. You'll just stagnate, and your work will get less and less interesting, and that's failure by erosion.
I had always seen myself as a star; I wanted to be a galaxy.
I see dance as glue for a community.
Nothing is more terrifying to me, really, than the status quo. I'll make mistakes before I keep doing something the same way.
