Ernst Haas Quotes

To make up a dance, I still need, as I needed then, a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea.

I am absorbed in the magic of movement and light. Movement never lies. It is the magic of what I call the outer space of the imagination.

The music has to drive you. That's just it. You follow it. You follow the songs.

The real message of the Dance opens up the vistas of life to all who have the urge to express beauty with no other instrument than their own bodies, with no apparatus and no dependence on anything other than space.

Dance was my escape from reality.

A dancer must listen to his body and pay homage to it. Behind the movement lies this terrible, driving passion, this necessity. I won't settle for anything less.

Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for -- liberation.

Dance constitutes a true recapturing of... freedom and childish play.

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.

Dancing insists we take up space, and though it has no set direction, we go there together. Dance is dangerous, joyous, sexual, holy, disruptive, and contagious and it breaks the rules. It can happen anywhere, at anytime, with anyone and everyone, and it's free. Dance joins us and pushes us to go further and that is why it's at the center of ONE BILLION RISING.

I believe dance is a manifestation and celebration of the tenacity of the human spirit.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Dance is an art that imprints on the soul. It is with you every moment, it expresses itself in everything you do.

Dancing is a gift. You are supposed to do it; it's like breathing.

In song and dance, man forgets how to walk and speak and is on the way into flying into the air, dancing... his very gestures express enchantment.

Dance is the purest expression of every emotion, earthly and spiritual

People need to dance. I'd say dance at least twice a day. That's how to get your energy up and how you keep you revolutionary spirit going. It's Emma Goldman who said, "Any revolution where I can't dance is not my revolution." I think that's the revolution we want.

Do you not realise that dance is the pure act of metamorphosis?

Every time I dance I have a high. I mean every time I danced, it was the whole world was the stage and I was in control of it and there was a form and a ritual and yet it was spontaneous and life didn't matter after that of before

You can only photograph a fragment of the here and now. The photograph presents the world as object; language, the world as idea.

The idea of space is given to the artist to change if he can. The subject matter in the abstract is space.

One of the most beautiful sights in dance is American Ballet Theatre in full flight.

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.

The idea comes to me from outside of me - and is like a gift. I then take the idea and make it my own - that is where the skill lies.

People ask me: ‘What is punk? How do you define punk?' Here's how I define punk: It's a free space. It could be called jazz. It could be called hip-hop. It could be called blues, or rock, or beat. It could be called techno. It's just a new idea. For me, it was punk rock. That was my entrance to this idea of the new ideas being able to be presented in an environment that wasn't being dictated by a profit motive.