Author

The use of chance operations opened out my way of working. The body tends to be habitual. The use of chance allowed us to find new ways to move and to put movements together that would not otherwise have been available to us. It revealed possibilities that were always there except that my mind hadn't seen them.

From Merce Cunningham

My dance classes were open to anybody, my only stipulation was that they had to come to the class every day.

From Merce Cunningham

All these dismal things that are going on in the world - the isolation and the sickness and the governments and the pollution - it's so frightful, over the whole world.

From Merce Cunningham

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

From Merce Cunningham

Movement is expressive. I've never denied that. I don't think there's such a thing as abstract dance.

From Merce Cunningham

You can get fixed ideas, and it can get restrictive. So, I try to put myself in a precarious position.

From Merce Cunningham

Fortunately, dance has been what's interested me all my life. So whether I am faced with incapacities or not, it still absorbs me.

From Merce Cunningham

I don't like teaching, because it's so repetitive - especially the beginning of class, which is always more or less the same and has to be carefully done. It's tedious. But I know it's necessary for dancers to keep working on technique.

From Merce Cunningham

My work always comes from the same source - from movement. It doesn't necessarily come from an outside idea, though the source can be something small or large that I've seen, often birds or other animals. The seeing can then provoke the imagining.

From Merce Cunningham

I think anything can feed you, depending on the way you look at it or listen to it.

From Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham

Notable Quotes

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