I think anything can feed you, depending on the way you look at it or listen to it. Merce Cunningham More Quotes by Merce Cunningham More Quotes From Merce Cunningham 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-day day myself giving The legs and arms can be a revelation of the back, the spine's extensions. Merce Cunningham revelation back spine legs 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 pollution isolation sickness world You can get fixed ideas, and it can get restrictive. So, I try to put myself in a precarious position. Merce Cunningham try myself you ideas 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 beginning know always done 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 birds small always work 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 me universe space time My process has changed over the years. I'd say it has been enhanced. Merce Cunningham say over process years In using chance operations, the mind is enriched. Merce Cunningham enriched operations chance mind 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 camera chance eye tools 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 know always music time 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 feeling never always moving 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 looking me fear work 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 slow your you feet It is upon the length and breadth and span of a body sustained in muscular action that dance invokes its image. Merce Cunningham image dance body action 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 words feeling cry fall 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 face new moon sky
