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… — Merce Cunningham Copy Share Image
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… — Merce Cunningham Copy Share Image
“Dance is an art in space and time. The object of the dancer is to obliterate that.” — Merce Cunningham Copy Share Image
I think anything can feed you, depending on the way you look at it or listen to it. — Merce Cunningham Copy Share Image
“You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on… — Merce Cunningham Copy Share Image
My dance classes were open to anybody, my only stipulation was that they had to come to the class every day. — Merce Cunningham Copy Share Image
You can get fixed ideas, and it can get restrictive. So, I try to put myself in a precarious position. — Merce Cunningham Copy Share Image
I was told that I had to give grades to the students, which I wasn't particularly interested in doing. — Merce Cunningham Copy Share Image
Fortunately, dance has been what's interested me all my life. So whether I am faced with incapacities or not, it still absorbs me. — Merce Cunningham Copy Share Image
Movement is expressive. I've never denied that. I don't think there's such a thing as abstract dance. — Merce Cunningham Copy Share Image
You do not separate the human being from the actions he does or the actions which surround him, but you see what it is… — Merce Cunningham Copy Share Image
Very often, you did something slow with your arm, for example, and something rapid with your feet - but the arm had to do… — Merce Cunningham Copy Share Image
I began to do this thing I do of giving myself a class every day, and trying to experiment and push further. I don't… — Merce Cunningham Copy Share Image
It is upon the length and breadth and span of a body sustained in muscular action that dance invokes its image. — Merce Cunningham Copy Share Image
I have always had this thing about moving around, and that has just remained, regardless of my physical changes. That feeling about it has… — Merce Cunningham Copy Share Image
