Justin Peck Quotes

Unlike a lot of choreographers, I don't always start with the music. I often start with a visual artist, and then find music that fits the world of that visual artist.

I try and create choreography that's in conversation with the music that the audience is hearing.

I usually write my music on a piano, and I really enjoy performing that way, because that actually shows how the music was in my mind before it actually became an electronic song.

Since I was a child, my whole life has revolved around music. It's often while listening to a song that ideas for my fashion collections formed.

My passion for music has always inspired my designs.

I don't get in there and create a character. It's more of a voice that I hear living inside the music.

I am able to write musically about the visual. I can pick up tones, I can pick up themes. And I find visual art is a wonderful launching-off place.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

I've made storylines through dance to complement the music. It's all about enhancing the singing and acting. It's been an amazing learning curve for me.

As a musician, it's only natural that my music mirrors my life.

An artistic standpoint - I've watched a lot of ballet and source some inspiration from how they move, connect with each other, and find meaning in their movement.

I'm trying to create ballets that I would enjoy seeing.

When I would create a dance, I wouldn't have the luxury that ballet people do when they take a piece of music and impose a dance upon it. What we did in motion pictures was have a song and within that song try to elaborate. My usual method was to do what a writer does: get a plot.

I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.

We know how Merce Cunningham works and how he thinks - we've been told, over and over again, by him and by others.

I tend to explain my songs.

In Degas's compositions with several dancers, their steps, postures and gestures often resemble the almost geometric, formal letters of an alphabet, whereas their bodies and heads are recalcitrant, sinuous and individual.

The ballet embodies the notes of music. And sometimes you almost feel like you can see the notes dance up there on the stage.

I look at the dancers and I get the inspiration for the work from them.

It's a big plethora of music floating around in my head all the time, and I'll sit there and write a song.

You're just playing, playing, playing, and then an image or something will come into your mind, and basically you're just narrating it with music, letting it move along.

Music is a big influence in my work and sometimes drives the energy of where I want to go.

It's one of my strongest dance pieces - having just done Play Without Words which was veering away from a lot of dance - I thought it would be nice to go back to something with almost the most dance I'd done.

I think it is your job as an artist to be able to hear a song.

I pick up my guitar and play. Something might come, and then the pen comes out. Then an edit, until something comes out that you're actually satisfied with.