The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion, the steadfast and willing devotion to the labor that makes the class work not a gymnastic hour and a half, or at the lowest level, a daily drudgery, but a devotion that allows the classroom discipline to become moments of dancing too.

More quotes by Merce Cunningham

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"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that fleeting moment when you feel alive."

- Merce Cunningham

Love

"Dance is an art in space and time. The object of the dancer is to obliterate that."

- Merce Cunningham

Creativity

"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls."

- Merce Cunningham

Ambition

"I think of dance as a constant transformation of life itself."

- Merce Cunningham

Change

"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive."

- Merce Cunningham

Contentment

More Hard Work Quotes

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"The effort you invest today is the pride you feel tomorrow."

- Unknown

Hard Work

"I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it."

- Thomas Jefferson

Hard Work

"The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work."

- Harry Golden

Hard Work

"A diamond is a piece of coal that stuck to the job."

- Michael Larsen

Hard Work

"A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work."

- Colin Powell

Hard Work