Wayne McGregor Quotes

The ballet embodies the notes of music. And sometimes you almost feel like you can see the notes dance up there on the stage.

I show elements of the set in my pictures because it's not real. When I see movies, I often love the 'making of' more than the movie itself. It's not so final. When you have a woman just standing there, it doesn't mean much.

I think I just have this need to be a storyteller. That's why I wasn't a great dancer - I couldn't articulate a story. I was a better choreographer. I have the need to to just express myself in that way. I can't explain it.

When I first began choreographing, I never thought of it as choreography but as expressing feelings. Though every piece is different, they are all trying to get at certain things that are difficult to put into words. In the work, everything belongs to everything else - the music, the set, the movement and whatever is said.

Then came the choreography... the impact of music and choreography tends to really emphasize an overall feeling of what you really want out of the program.

I have always believed that an artiste needs to respond to a story first. One has to feel it in order to live it.

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

If you want to paint the inner life, you paint it from the exterior. From the exterior, you breathe the inner life into your painting.

The actor creates with his own flesh and blood all those things which all the arts try in some way to describe.

I don't ever work in a way where something is an illustration of an event, but when something is occurring at the same time I see it as very informed by that.

Music is my life. I love doing it, so I just do it nonstop all day. And with dancing, I wanted to put on a show for people. I don't want to just be sitting there doing nothing, so that's when I started to dance.

Do I watch dancers as people? Yes, absolutely. Do I watch really good dancers for specifically who they are? Absolutely, because how they move best and how they look best is going to be most familiar to them, and not necessarily to me.

Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies.

I have to go with what the painting says to me. The painting is always informing me. I'm its servant; it's not mine. I'm doing what it wants.

I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience.

You're basically the sum of all the experiences you've ever had, and they're sort of shaken up in you and reproduced in the things you create, and that includes seeing movies.

I've created, directed and choreographed for Lady Gaga since the beginning, so 'Born This Way,' this was musically such an amazing evolution and such a brilliant record. So when she played it for me, it took me a while to find out the visual interpretation that I could give back to her.

I can't claim to 'understand' 'Byzantium,' if any dance work can be 'understood,' but whenever I see it, I sense that it's charged with meaning.

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?'

Sometimes I don't even know what to name a song when I get done with it, and I'll let somebody else tell me what I should call it because it's whatever stuck in their head.

When I was a dancer, I was acting.

I love the way in which I make up dances. It's a complicated way and the product is usually clear. Clear and simple. I don't need everybody to know that there are all of these fabulous things going on. If you CAN see it, that's wonderful.

It's the director's job to piece together my performance, his interpretation of my takes, each take, and string them together and make a statement. I'm red paint on a canvas for a painter.

For me, the choreography always comes from the music.

I've made storylines through dance to complement the music. It's all about enhancing the singing and acting. It's been an amazing learning curve for me.