Mae Jemison Quotes

Seeing 'Revelations' made me want to be a professional dancer.

And I just thought, this is what I want to be. And I knew that dancing would be my chosen profession.

I wanted to be a professional dancer my whole life.

As soon as I started dancing at 14, I knew I was always going to be a professional dancer.

While dancing for me was fun, becoming a choreographer was not something I wanted to do.

I taught and studied dance in college, and for over a decade, I thought that would be my career: tap dancer, ballet dancer, modern dancer. I still find myself doing some tumbling or interpretive dancing in the grocery store every now and then.

I grew up always wanting to be a dancer, and when I went to New York, I fell in love with the idea of performing in all ways. I saw myself traveling with a company or making my own work and being a little weird. I wasn't thinking about the business side of anything; I just knew that I loved dancing.

In my heart, my first desire was to be a dancer. I always wanted to dance and I danced from the time I was 7 till I was well into my 30s.

I have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer's work is.

I'm a fantastic dancer!

I frequently go to the ballet, but I don't miss it in the sense that I wish I were still dancing.

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.

I am a professional dancer, so picking up dance steps was like brushing my teeth.

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.

You see, dancers are quite mature people because they start performing so early. They become professionals when they start to take everyday classes.

I am different because I have better schooling, better understanding of the line, gesture, how feet working, positions. They taught me modern things... and I wanted to give what I had: my schooling.

I've been dancing all my life, but I never did it seriously.

I wanted to be a dancer my whole life. And when I gave it up to act, I always had a really sad part of myself that missed it and missed performing and missed being physical in that way.

Every great dance company, even when it seems poised in perfect balance, needs constant renewal of both repertory and performers.

I would describe my dancing talents as incredibly deep.

I started out as a dancer as a kid; I've been dancing since I was 4. So performing was always part of what I was.

I was a late bloomer, but I had a career as a contemporary dancer before that, so I had some kind of connection to this world. But I was always a little more in love with the drama of dancing than the aesthetics, so I thought, 'Why don't you give it a chance if you think you can do it a little different?'

I have lots of interests, but it's true that dancing is a very full-time job.

I started dancing ballet when I was very young, so my background really is dance. But I remember loving the feeling of being on a stage and having a love for performing from a young age.

I was in a competing company and have been dancing since I was four - ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop - so it's a huge part of my life and my music.