Top Merce Cunningham Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Merce Cunningham Biography

Merce Cunningham

Mercier Philip "Merce" Cunningham (April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American modern dance for more than 50 years. He is also notable for his frequent collaborations with artists of other disciplines, including musicians John Cage and David Tudor, and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Bruce Nauman. Works that he produced with these artists had a profound impact on avant-garde art beyond the world of dance.

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Merce Cunningham Quotes

Falling is one of the ways of moving.

Moving, Fall, Way, Ways, Falling

There's no thinking involved in my choreography. . . I don't work through images or ideas. I work through the body. . . If the dancer dances, which is not the same as having theories about dancing or wishing to dance or trying to dance, everything is there. When I dance, it means: this is what I am doing.

Dance, Mean, Thinking, Same, Ideas

Dancing is a spiritual exercise in a physical form.

Dancing, Exercise, Physical, Spiritual

Anything can feed you, depending on the way you look at it.

Looks, Way, Depending, Feed, Look

The only way to do it is to do it.

Dance, Dancing, Way

You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls.

Dance, Wall, Museums, Back, Love, Stick

I'm not expressing anything. I'm presenting people moving.

Expressing, Moving, People, Presenting

The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion.

Dance, Dancing, Devotion, Discipline, Essential, Thing

There are no fixed points in space.

Fixed, Points, Space

You have to love dancing to stick to it.

Dancing, Love, Stick, Sticks

Light or luminosity is created by the way elements are juxtaposed. They become reflective and a radiance comes from putting different things together.

Light, Together, Different, Juxtaposed, Things, Become

The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion, the steadfast and willing devotion to the labor that makes the classwork not a gymnastic hour and a half, or at the lowest level, a daily drudgery, but a devotion that allows the classroom discipline to become moments of dancing too.

Ballet Class, Daily, Dance, Discipline, Hour, Steadfast

I think of dance as a constant transformation of life itself.

Dance, Thinking, Transformation, Think

I was told that I had to give grades to the students, which I wasn't particularly interested in doing.

Giving, Students, Grades, Told, Interested