Choreographic Process Quotes

I can always invent movement, and sometimes it can be fitted into the right place, but that is not choreography. It is the music that dictates the whole shape of the work. I do not believe in the permanence of anything in ballet save the purely classical.

For me, choreography is a process of physical thinking. It's very much in mind as well as in body.

There's an innate feeling when I choreograph in juxtaposition to how I feel as a dancer. When I choreograph, I never really look into the mirror. But as dancers, we always check ourselves in the mirror. I do feel that when I choreograph, I am making a dance on my own body. Much of it is my own response to the music.

Choreography is simpler than you think. Just go and do, and don't think so much about it. Just make something interesting.

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.

Unlike a lot of choreographers, I don't always start with the music. I often start with a visual artist, and then find music that fits the world of that visual artist.

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.

What makes people and companies and artistic directors and choreographers interested in working with dancers is the ability to kind of let go of everything you think you know and be a blank canvas.

I realize that once I stopped fighting the technical process of how to move my body, I made it choreography.

The choreographic process is exhausting. It happens on one's feet after hours of work, and the energy required is roughly the equivalent of writing a novel and winning a tennis match simultaneously.

I try and create choreography that's in conversation with the music that the audience is hearing.