DeObia Oparei Quotes

Theatre was an art form that I didn't really respect, and because I wanted to shake it up and do different things on stage, I was able to combine all the things I'd learnt through writing on my own.

When I first came to New York City in 1967, I joined up with Richard Schechner's Performance Group - where we worked in the Performing Garage in SoHo.

I suppose I'm really interested in theatre that provides an intensity of experience on another level.

When you think about Dada and the great moments in Modern Art, it's always the sense of when you're not sure that art is most likely to be occurring.

I've seen some terrible plays, but I generally enjoy myself. One play I walked out of, I have a tremendous respect for the author. That was Robert Wilson, something called 'Network,' which consisted of Wilson sitting on a bunk, the dialogue of the movie 'Network' looped in while a chair on a rope went up and down.

I keep starting supergroups, writing ballets and things like that.

Leigh Bowery was actually quoted as saying, "Flesh is my most favorite fabric." I've seen many a freak make a scene and go, but Leigh was a special kind of exhibitionist because he was dedicated and saw it as an art form.

I remember films I made at university, which are unbelievably pretentious. Poetry that I'd written that I delivered to camera, against a Venetian blind, strong shadows, looking slightly off-camera.

When we watch dance, the artists and the audience are part of a momentary collective experience that will never happen again.

Music is something you can't really put in terms like in a sport, like running or football - that you win if you score more. In music, there's nothing like that.

I love Grace Jones. She's everything.

I've never looked at what I do as show business, I guess, because of my connection to the art and how I was introduced to the dance.

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

When I do makeup, it's performative. I don't really wear makeup, but I use it as a tool to talk about gender and sexuality.

First of all, I'm not a singer or rapper. I'm an artiste. Besides singing, I produce music, dance, write poetry, and sometimes I paint as well.

If I was a man, I would be a drag queen. Honestly, I would. I absolutely love it.

I started doing drag because I needed a creative outlet for myself.

I've always thought of the process of creating ballets as being this kind of team effort. It's not like being a painter, where you have your paint, and you have canvas, and you just go at it. I'm working with these living, breathing, functioning human beings, and they have their own thoughts and ideas about what works well movement-wise.

Among my classical dances, I loved my 'Mrig Trishna' dance. People should try that on stage. I don't know why they don't. It's beautifully written.

Anne Imhof is a powerful artist from Germany making work that is totally interdisciplinary.

Out of drag, I'm a white guy with a guitar, which isn't special. There are a million white guys with guitars. But being a drag queen with a guitar is a lot more commanding.

Drag is involved with changing identities and not taking identities too seriously at all. That's why drag is such a hard sell to a network - or anyone, really - because it's up against the ego.

There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior; what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?

I started getting really curious about art. I read about the Dadaists and the Futurists and the Constructivists - those kind of movements which were reflecting the angst of the people of their times. Their work was trying to lead a movement. I began thinking about what was happening, with painting on the streets and painting on the trains as being similar but also coming from a real, pure space. It wasn't being created by academies. It was a spontaneous combustion of ideas that just happened.

I work in between the cracks, where the voice starts dancing, where the body starts singing, where theater becomes cinema.