Dance Improvisation Quotes

While I love dancing, and even acting in 'ABCD' - 'Anybody Can Dance' - was fun, I remain, at heart, a choreographer.

Those 25 dancers we worked with for a day, in as highly productive a way as possible - a long class, a period of teaching bits of the repertory - in fact I didn't teach Bank, I've used parts of Oil and Water.

I'd been collecting eccentric moves since I was a kid and didn't even know that the dance step I improvised in 'Be Back Soon' was called a 'pas de basque.'

Choreography is amazing. I'm still a dancer, yet I transitioned into choreography then as a Creative Director. All of these creative elements are brought out of being a dancer. Directing is something that comes out of understanding movement and choreography. Directing movement is directing a dance piece.

If I'm at a party, I can put on some crazy dance moves. However, it's not synchronized, beautiful or choreographed like a ballet dancer. I'd love to be graceful like that.

Give me something to dance about and I'll dance it.

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'd get sent home from the first audition of So You Think You Can Dance. My dancing is sort of controlled spasms. I fully accept it might appear ridiculous. But it's passionate!

Honestly, I am so ignorant of how dance works that I can't even imagine a story that you would want to tell through movement.

I don't think there is anything new left for me in choreography.

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 started dancing in my room... I wanted to find out more about my movements. I wanted to elaborate on whatever it was that I was doing there.

Merce is my favorite artist in any field.

But there is a world of difference between dancing and watching a dance performed by a group of professionals who are paid for it. You work hard during the day, and when you are tired in the evening you go to a concert to watch others dancing. It is all you can do, but it is not even an apology for celebration.

I can't do choreographed movement. It has to come from my heart... and my pelvis.

I was shy at dancing. I practice at home. I was practicing in the mirror. Dancing everywhere. Then I just started feeling good. I started feeling coordinated. I started feeling the music better.

'The Company' was interesting. I didn't love it, although it might be compelling to someone who isn't a dancer. There wasn't a lot of dialogue, and you were just kind of observing the creative process of choreography and in class.

Choreography is writing on your feet.

I was privileged to be able to study a year with Martha Graham, the last year she was teaching.

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

One of my strong suits is finding and creating transitions between moves, then stringing combinations into series.

I'm not a trained dancer in the slightest.

When I was young, I took classical ballet lessons, but I wasn't very good at it. It was really frustrating because I wanted to be good at it. When I stopped having lessons, I began to dance and improvise, and I felt more comfortable.

The first time I started choreographing was in the dark, in my living room, with the lights completely out, to some popular music on the radio. I put the radio on full blast and I started moving. I didn't know what it looked like. I didn't want to see it... I had to start in the dark.

I was always the kid down the street who got the other kids to put on a show. But it was only when I was 19, and discovered ballet and contemporary dance, that I got interested in the fact that you could have a whole evening of dance - rather than just waiting for the dancers in a musical.