Falling is one of the ways of moving. Merce Cunningham More Quotes by Merce Cunningham More Quotes From Merce Cunningham 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 walldancemuseums 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 dancemeanthinking The only way to do it is to do it. Merce Cunningham dancingdanceway 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 ballet-classdisciplinedance I'm not expressing anything. I'm presenting people moving. Merce Cunningham presentingpeoplemoving 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 differentlighttogether Dancing is a spiritual exercise in a physical form. Merce Cunningham dancingspiritualexercise I think of dance as a constant transformation of life itself. Merce Cunningham transformationdancethinking There are no fixed points in space. Merce Cunningham fixedspace Anything can feed you, depending on the way you look at it. Merce Cunningham looksway The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion. Merce Cunningham disciplinedancingdance I was told that I had to give grades to the students, which I wasn't particularly interested in doing. Merce Cunningham gradesstudentsgiving You have to love dancing to stick to it. Merce Cunningham dancingsticks 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 seeyoupassionway My dance classes were open to anybody, my only stipulation was that they had to come to the class every day. Merce Cunningham every-daydaydanceclass 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 supportmusicdancetime Movement is expressive. I've never denied that. I don't think there's such a thing as abstract dance. Merce Cunningham neverthinkabstractdance 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 i-ammedancelife 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 chancemindtogetherway 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 every-daydaymyselfgiving
