Alejandro Jodorowsky Quotes

I like actors that are good with pantomime and that can transmit a lot by their presence and attitude more than through their dialogue.

I started under my master, Etienne Decroux, who taught me a new grammar for mime he called statuary mime. This grammar brings style creations. Without it, no art survives.

I learned mime back when I was in college, at Ball State University, Indiana. That woke up my body from the neck down and made me realize that acting and communication - portraying a story, event, or emotion - is a full-body experience.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me.

Pantomime is a big thing in the cultural calendar of my country, you know. So subtlety's not my forte.

Everybody uses mime and gesture in real life, though we don't realize it. It's very useful as a performance technique, though it can be boring to watch on its own.

Dance, theatre, etc. as art, will disappear along with the dominating 'expression' of tragedy and harmony: the movement of life itself will become harmonious.

Physical expression was my first language: Before I was an actor, I was a dancer, an acrobat, a mime and a street performer.

It's interesting - a lot of good actors are good mimes. But I'm terrible. If I tried to do an impression, nobody would know what I was doing.

I am a company in myself. My repertoire has become a bible for all mimes in the world.

You can do 'Hamlet' while performing cartwheels... as long as the audience sees your eyes - you can make the performance real.

They say pantomime's a lost art. It's never been a lost art and never will be, because it's too natural to do.

I certainly enjoy doing pantomime-y things, but I didn't have any specific training in it.

I studied and performed and even taught mime years ago.

I prefer to express myself physically, or non-verbally. I prefer just to react without having a lot of dialogue.

Whether I'm doing a routine where I want to move people, or if I want to feel moved myself, I definitely tap into those moments where it's not just dancing or movement. It might just be a hand gesture or just a slow look, or even just the way you slightly tip your head forward. These subtleties speak volumes.

What I always say is that we're the illegitimate children of Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lewis.

When I first began choreographing, I never thought of it as choreography but as expressing feelings. Though every piece is different, they are all trying to get at certain things that are difficult to put into words. In the work, everything belongs to everything else - the music, the set, the movement and whatever is said.

In a clown, we see what we do that makes us laugh and cry. I kept the white face, the tradition of the Pierrot. My clown became a romantic and stylized figure. I wanted to be an abstract and concrete figure, a symbol of humanity.

It's a good challenge as an actor to express feelings without saying too many words.

Though I am associated in the public mind with glamorous songs and dances, my appearance in 'Company' is in no way glamorous. Rather than rely on my body language, the number zooms in on my facial expressions.

Just like music, I consider wrestling to be an art form, and I have a vision of what that art should look like.

In films, the camera catches each nuance of expression in close ups. On the stage, it is less subtle, you have to act with your whole body.

Tell a story. You don't have to do a thousand things in two minutes when you can do one just as good and still tell that story with your face or how you land or your reaction. That's a lost art. Storytelling is a big part of our industry, and if given time, you can do it properly.

I think I was born to be a clown. I just haven't figured out how to bring that side of myself into the world of filmmaking. It's much more comfortable for me to cry on a film set than it is to tell a joke.