Quotes by Merce Cunningham - Page 1

The only way to do it is to do it.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Dance
Dancing
Way
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There are no fixed points in space.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Space
Fixed
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Falling is one of the ways of moving.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Fall
Moving
Way
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You have to love dancing to stick to it.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Dancing
Sticks
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In using chance operations, the mind is enriched.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Chance
Operations
Enriched
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Dancing is a spiritual exercise in a physical form.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Dancing
Exercise
Spiritual
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The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Dance
Dancing
Discipline
Essentials
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I'm not expressing anything. I'm presenting people moving.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Moving
People
Presenting
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Anything can feed you, depending on the way you look at it.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Looks
Way
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I think of dance as a constant transformation of life itself.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Dance
Constant
Thinking
Transformation
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My process has changed over the years. I'd say it has been enhanced.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Enhanced
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The legs and arms can be a revelation of the back, the spine's extensions.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Arms
Extensions
Legs
Spine
Revelation
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I think anything can feed you, depending on the way you look at it or listen to it.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Feed
Depending
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Movement is expressive. I've never denied that. I don't think there's such a thing as abstract dance.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Abstract
Denied
Expressive
Such A Thing
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You can get fixed ideas, and it can get restrictive. So, I try to put myself in a precarious position.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Fixed
Precarious
Restrictive
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I was told that I had to give grades to the students, which I wasn't particularly interested in doing.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Giving
Grades
Students
Particularly
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My dance classes were open to anybody, my only stipulation was that they had to come to the class every day.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Dance
Class
Dance Classes
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It is upon the length and breadth and span of a body sustained in muscular action that dance invokes its image.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Dance
Action
Breadth
Length
Image
Muscular
Span
Sustained
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Fortunately, dance has been what's interested me all my life. So whether I am faced with incapacities or not, it still absorbs me.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Dance
Life I Am Me
Absorb
All My Life
Life Me I Am
Faced
Fortunately
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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 / Dancer
Different
Light
Together
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I have always had this thing about moving around, and that has just remained, regardless of my physical changes. That feeling about it has never changed.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Regardless
Remained
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Cage always wanted to know what my structure was, if I had one. I often did have some sense of the time structure. Then he'd make a different one for the music.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Structure
Time Music Always
Cage
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Our emotions are constantly being propelled by some new face in the sky, some new rocket to the moon, some new sound in the ear, but they are the same emotions.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Moon
Sky
Constantly
Ear
Emotions
Rocket
To The Moon
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All these dismal things that are going on in the world - the isolation and the sickness and the governments and the pollution - it's so frightful, over the whole world.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Isolation
Pollution
Sickness
Dismal
Frightful
Governments
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I use the computer as a tool. Like chance or the camera or the other tools I've used, it can open my eye to other ways of seeing or of making dances. It's not simply to do a trick.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Tools
Dances
Trick
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Very often, you did something slow with your arm, for example, and something rapid with your feet - but the arm had to do something large against this - and this set up a kind of opposition.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Arm
For Example
Rapid
Slow
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What really made me think about space and begin to think about ways to use it was Einstein's statement that there are no fixed points in space. Everything in the universe is moving all the time.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Fixed
Moving
Universe
Time Space Universe
Begin
Einstein
Space Time Me
Statement
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Dancing has a continuity of its own that need not be dependent upon either the rise or fall of sound or the pitch and cry of words. Its force of feeling lies in the physical image, fleeting or static.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Continuity
Cry
Dancing
Dependent
Fall
Fleeting
Force
Static
Rise
Image
Lies
Physical
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I think the thing that we agreed to so many years ago, actually, was that the music didn't have to support the dance nor the dance illustrate the music, but they could be two things going on at the same time.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Dance
Years Ago
Agreed
Time Music Dance
Illustrate
Nor
Same Time
So Many Years
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I began to fear that the Graham work was not in lots of ways sufficient for me. I suppose it came about from looking at other dancing and being involved with the ballet - something about the air and the way she thought about dancing.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Ballet
Sufficient
Work Fear Me
Graham
Suppose
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I don't like teaching, because it's so repetitive - especially the beginning of class, which is always more or less the same and has to be carefully done. It's tedious. But I know it's necessary for dancers to keep working on technique.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Class
Repetitive
Technique
Beginning
Less
Carefully
Dancers
More Or Less
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My work always comes from the same source - from movement. It doesn't necessarily come from an outside idea, though the source can be something small or large that I've seen, often birds or other animals. The seeing can then provoke the imagining.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Work Always Something
Birds
Imagining
Provoke
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You do not separate the human being from the actions he does or the actions which surround him, but you see what it is like to break these actions up in different ways, to allow passion - and it is passion - to appear for each person in his own way.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Break
Different Ways
Passion
Surround
Actions
Allow
Appear
Human Being
Ways
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I began to do this thing I do of giving myself a class every day, and trying to experiment and push further. I don't mean to say I knew everything, because I didn't, but I would do what I knew and then push beyond that and see what else I could find.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Myself Day Every Day
Experiment
Further
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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 / Dancer
Dance
Giving
Museums
Wall
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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 / Dancer
Dance
Ballet Class
Dancing
Discipline
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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 / Dancer
Dance
Mean
Thinking
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The use of chance operations opened out my way of working. The body tends to be habitual. The use of chance allowed us to find new ways to move and to put movements together that would not otherwise have been available to us. It revealed possibilities that were always there except that my mind hadn't seen them.
Merce Cunningham / Dancer
Chance
Available
Body
Habitual
Mind
New Ways
Together
Allowed
Seen
Find
Working
Except
Put
Move
Opened
Otherwise
Possibilities
Revealed
Tends
Ways
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Merce Cunningham Quotes - Page 1

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