Quotes & Sayings About Choreography

This choreography of ruin, the world breaking
like glass under a microscope,
the way it doesn't crack all at once,
but spreads out from the damaged cavities.
Still for a moment it all recedes.
The backyard potatoes swell quietly
buried beneath their canopy of leaves.
The wind rubs its hands through the trees. — Ellen Bass

In Hong Kong, particularly, we craft this art for decades. The action choreographer actually is the action director. He takes over and he choreographs with - by himself or with his team, and place the camera where he feels cinematic effect to bring out that choreography. — Donnie Yen

All knitting is choreography. — Clara Parkes

Every dance you make belongs to you. It is part of your collection. When you think of it like that, you'll want to make your next routine the best you've ever made! — Torron-Lee Dewar

I learnt a lot from my Broadway experience, it was one of the most challenging things I will probably ever have to do in my entire life, because it was eight shows a week - live singing with really hard choreography - and the spontaneity, you don't know what's going to happen. — Ariana Grande

Sergio Trujillos choreography adds coals to the inferno, with movement that plain just doesnt stop. We know from Jersey Boys that he can capture this style, but in Memphis, he kicks it up towards art, playing with the authentic touches to add some hits of Fosse, or riffs from modern dance that take us just that extra step we need. — Richard Ouzounian

The planet isn't improvising, it's creating dynamic tensions between complex living systems in a planetary choreography, a balancing act between physical, chemical, biological, environmental, and human components. — DJ Spooky

When you're doing an action set piece, it's very similar to choreography in a way because it's shot that way. It's meticulous how it's rehearsed. I mean, you have no idea. — Rob Marshall

Idol has pretty much taken me out of my recording and out of my choreography. I have managed to slip in some choreography jobs. And I've been writing songs for other artists. — Paula Abdul

Music. Close your eyes and it's a rosebush blooming in time lapse so that it shoots and blossoms flow outward in a swift choreography of growth and collapse, twine and coil, release and fade.
Close your eyes and music paints light vines and calligraphy on the darkness within you. — Laini Taylor

At our first rehearsal for team week, Robert and I were put on the same team. That first rehearsal was mostly for the pro dancers to figure out the choreography and the themes. Robert and I knew we couldn't contribute much, so we hung back and joked around. Then someone told us that there was beer in the refrigerator in the rehearsal room. That wasn't normal, and since we were just hanging around, Robert and I each decided to go grab one. The cameras stayed on us as we came back into the studio. Everyone looked up and we said, "This dancing stuff is hard!" Everyone laughed and then the serious people got back to work. — Noah Galloway

And Toronto's own Sergio Trujillo has redone his choreography totally, showing all the comical invention that we know he's capable of. — Richard Ouzounian

I couldn't pick up a sword and go fight anyone, let me put it that way. It's choreography and it's acting. The best sword fights you see look amazing, but it's the acting that sells it more than anything. — Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Somehow they were entwining without touch, following a choreography laid down in time for lovers. — Emma Calin

Yes, Carl Vine stuck around. He's now number one composer for choreography. — Graeme Murphy

Hauntings are memes, especially pernicious thought contagions, social contagions that need no viral or bacterial host and are transmitted in a thousand different ways. A book, a poem, a song, a bedtime story, a grandmother's suicide, the choreography of a dance, a few frames of film, a diagnosis of schizophrenia, a deadly tumble from a horse, a faded photograph, or a story you tell your daughter. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

The modern age has been characterized by a Promethean spirit, a restless energy that preys on speed records and shortcuts, unmindful of the past, uncaring of the future, existing only for the moment and the quick fix. The earthly rhythms that characterize a more pastoral way of life have been shunted aside to make room for the fast track of an urbanized existence. Lost in a sea of perpetual technological transition, modern man and woman find themselves increasingly alienated from the ecological choreography of the planet. — Jeremy Rifkin

I think it's absolutely possible for any woman to use the moves I do with Lady Gaga. Just put on her 'Born This Way' video or turn on one of her songs, spend 20 minutes and get a routine down just by watching our choreography. You'll start to see a difference in your abs, legs and butt. Anyone can get great results from this. — Laurieann Gibson

At the beginning, ballet accounted for at least two hours out of six hours of my daily training session. Later I devoted less time to ballet, but every workout of mine included training in choreography. — Natalia Yurchenko

When life gets you down, improvise as if crawling was part of the choreography. — Iveta Cherneva

Every actor has to move in a Terrence Malick film - that's the requirement. If you stop, he'll tell you, 'No, no, keep moving.' You can't be static. It's a choreography. — Olga Kurylenko

I've been designing since I was 8. I started sketching dresses I could wear when skating. I was always involved in all aspects of skating, not just the technique, the choreography, the music, but the visual aspects, too - what I should wear. — Vera Wang

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. — Merce Cunningham

Stronach's fragile beauty belies an emotional strength, pragmatic resiliency, and intellectual courage. Her ideas and choreography are both enigmatic and playful. — Tami Stronach

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. — George Balanchine

Choreography is mentally draining, but there's a pleasure in getting into the studio with the dancers and the music. — Alvin Ailey

You'd have to go all the way back to 1972 to find a version of me who didn't care about theater, who didn't read Playbill and watch the Tony Awards, or get why Bob Fosse's choreography was so groundbreaking that all you need to say is 'Fosse hands' and theater people know what you mean. — Jean Hanff Korelitz

I liked the choreography, but I didn't care for the costumes. — Tommy Tune

When you start with an idea, or something hits you, then you have to follow that through to the end, and it's the following through to the end that makes the pattern. That, for me, is choreography. — Martha Graham

Good choreography fuses eye, ear and mind. — Arlene Croce

I've spent a lot of time playing Bach partitas. One of my first jobs was to play for ballet and modern classes, so the music in 'Partita' is kind of like choreography for me. — Caroline Shaw

My high school musical did not offer a shirtless Zac Efron but it did provide me with many lessons. I learned that I loved being in a theatre, attending rehearsals, and building sets. I loved listening to the director and groaning about rehearsing choreography — Amy Poehler

When I finally decided to do the show, I only had two weeks to learn the choreography and the songs in French. — LaToya Jackson

My mom is actually a former prima ballerina, and all the women in my family are associated either with dance or choreography or acting, so I'm very lucky in a way because I grew up in a family of artists. I've been dancing since I was a little kid. — Ksenia Solo

Anyone who says the Backstreet Boys can't sing is crazy. They're probably just reading some highbrow critic who hates anyone the general public embraces. I'm sorry, but those boys sing their butts off. They work hard on their choreography, and on their harmonies. Their tracks are tight and solid. Their songs are musical and memorable. — Tony Orlando

Without my husband's costumes I wouldn't have known how to accomplish what I saw in my own mind's eyes for choreography. And then seeing our choreography and knowing the background of it I am sure helped my husband a great deal with what he designed for us. — Katherine Dunham

I'm just about the movies; I enjoy the dexterity of actors in action movies and the choreography side of things. You've just got to be a different person to be a professional fighter. I train with professional fighters, so I know what it takes. It's a very difficult profession, probably harder then the acting profession. — Scott Adkins

I had certain physical limitations that made me change the choreography for myself or made me more interested in choreography only rather than dancing. I have never been a person who wanted to just dance. I have always been interested in developing for other people. — Katherine Dunham

I danced with Jacques d'Amboise. At that time, he was the tallest man in the company. So it was a different kind of choreography. It was lyrical. — Patricia McBride

You're not going to stay for the thing?" He took a bite of manicotti. "There's nothing you could do, say, nothing you could possibly offer - including deviant sexual favors - that would induce me to be within a hundred yards of that baby shower." "Crap." She forked up a nice chunk of meatball. "Not even if I combined chocolate sauce with the outfit?" "Not even." "There could be whipped cream. And choreography." "An — J.D. Robb

We must recognize that our frustrations are largely due to the fact that we have not learned how to "dance" to a large part of the emotional spectrum. Being emotionally versatile is like being a good dancer. Just as dancers must challenge themselves to master new moves with their bodies, we must challenge ourselves to learn new forms of psychological choreography. — T.K. Coleman

Why were Jack and his brother digging post holes? A fence there would run parallel to the one that already enclosed the farmyard. The Welches had no animals to keep in or out - a fence there could serve no purpose. Their work was pointless. Years later, while I was waiting for a boat to take me across the river, I watched two Vietnamese women methodically hitting a discarded truck tire with sticks. They did it for a good long while, and were still doing it when I crossed the river. They were part of the dream from which I recognized the Welches, my defeat-dream, my damnation-dream, with its solemn choreography of earnest useless acts. — Tobias Wolff

One time, the homie Venus[-X] read me; we were on the phone and she was like, "Girl, you keep wearing jeans and t-shirts at your shows, but the music doesn't give that." I was like, "You're right, I need to be the person that I am at school, making dance and choreography. I should think about the whole performance." That's when I put the 1 in my name and started dressing for the occasion. — Le1f

When Iron Man's flying, we'd send real planes up to do the choreography so that we'd get the camerawork to really look like a cameraman was following from another plane. It gives it that 'Top Gun' look. — Jon Favreau

My monumental netted sculptural environments move through time, animated by an ever-changing 'wind choreography,' making invisible air currents suddenly visible to the human eye. I make living, breathing pieces that respond to the forces of nature - wind, light, water. — Janet Echelman

The only plan I've come up with is writing. I can write, because writing - unlike choreography, architecture, or conquering kingdoms - is a thing you can do when you're lonely and poor, and have no infrastructure, i.e., a ballet troupe or some cannons. Poor people can write. It's one of the few things poverty, and lack of connections, cannot stop you doing. — Caitlin Moran

I had always choreographed a little, beginning in high school. And I leaned toward choreography. I always had an overview of what was going on. — Patricia Birch

Dancing is such a despised and dishonored trade that if you tell a doctor or a laywer you do choreography he'll look at you as if you were a hummingbird. Dancers don't get invited to visit people. It is assumed a boy dancer will run off with the spoons and a girl with the head of the house. — Agnes De Mille

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

When you shoot a musical, you're shooting to lipsynch tracks, so we had to figure out our choreography and work out what we wanted to do with each number before we did it. — Norman Jewison

I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write. — Mary Oliver

The thing about fights, I mean real fights, is that they're nothing like what you see on TV. There's no fancy choreography, no drawn-out, back and forth battle and the sad truth is the good guy doesn't always win. In reality, they're quick, scrappy, and brutal, and the winner is quite simply the guy who doesn't fight fair - at — James P. Sumner

One [project of Teddy Cruz's] is titled Living Rooms at the Border. it takes a piece of land with an unused church zoned for three units and carefully arrays on it twelve affordable housing units, a community center (the converted church), offices for Casa in the church's attic, and a garden that can accommodate street markets and kiosks. 'In a place where current regulation allows only one use,' [Cruz} crows, ' we propose five different uses that support each other. This suggests a model of social sustainability for San Diego, one that conveys density not as bulk but as social choreography.' For both architect and patron, it's an exciting opportunity to prove that breaking the zoning codes can be for the best. Another one of Cruz's core beliefs is that if architects are going to achieve anything of social distinction, they will have to become developers' collaborators or developers themselves, rather than hirelings brought in after a project's parameters are laid out. — Rebecca Solnit

My dancers expect me to deliver because my choreography represents their livelihood. — Twyla Tharp

Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra - not choreography to the audience. — George Szell

When working on my choreography I am not always receptive to outside suggestions or opinions. I believe that if you have something in mind in the way of a creation, such as a new dance, a sequence, or an effect, you are certain to come up with inaccurate criticism and damaging results if you go around asking for opinions. — Fred Astaire

I've done a lot of Samurai film in Japan, and sometimes done the choreography by myself. — Hiroyuki Sanada

I have always loved contemporary dance, but it has always been a bit of a mystery to me. But choreography is very much like what I do when you are putting characters in frame on the page. It's so impressive what they do with their bodies. It's like painting: an abstraction. — Michael Leunig

There's a dance that happens with you and that's why I really like doing it with stunt men, because they know how to dance generally better than actors do. It is choreography and if you aren't used to doing it things can go wrong. — Channing Tatum

The problem is this: when we separate Jesus from his ideas for an alternative social structure, we inevitably succumb to the temptation to harness Jesus to our ideas - thus conferring upon our human political ideas an assumed divine endorsement. With little awareness of what we are doing, we find ourselves in collusion with the principalities and powers to keep the world in lockstep with the ancient choreography of violence, war, and death. We do this mostly unconsciously, but we do it. I've done it. And the result is that we reduce Jesus to being the Savior who guarantees our reservation in heaven while using him to endorse our own ideas about how to run the world. This feeds into a nationalized narrative of the gospel and leads to a state-owned Jesus. Thus, our understanding of Christ has mutated from Roman Jesus to Byzantine Jesus to German Jesus to American Jesus, etc. — Brian Zahnd

In vocal choreography you had to give a lot of consideration to the fact that you were working with singers and not dancers. But you had to make singers look like they were dancers, and to make the movements as natural as possible, and there to be an association with the movement, uh, somewhat to what the lyric was saying. — Cholly Atkins

The best seat in the house often depends on the ballet. For instance, much of the first act of 'The Nutcracker' is domestic and small scale, so it's great to sit up close. But the second act features elaborate scenery and choreography, which are better to observe from a distance. — Robert Gottlieb

Dance has helped me with everything. It was a great foundation for discipline, hard work and, unfortunately, the ever-elusive idea of perfection. It lends itself easily to fight choreography, because that's what it really is. Choreography. And knowing how to move with someone. — Keri Russell

I can write, because writing - unlike choreography, architecture, or conquering kingdoms - is a thing you can do when you're lonely and poor, and have no infrastructure, i.e., a ballet troupe or some cannons. — Caitlin Moran

Even if you perform with a great choreography, or a part of a great group, I believe you can't imitate people's aura. — Minzy

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. — Pina Bausch

Maybe because I come from choreography, I've always felt that there's something about action films that made it very natural for me to go that way. It's story through movement. — Rob Marshall

Every company has its style, and that's what makes the Bolshoi so impressive: their attack on jumps or their attack on choreography. — David Hallberg

Bruce Lee has always been a hero of mine, and the choreography in 'Enter The Dragon' is amazing. — Benedict Wong

Fighting is kind of like choreography. It's not just get in there and punching someone: you have to have choreography. Someone is going to hit high; someone is going to hit at the bottom. — Emeraude Toubia

Choreography is amazing. I'm still a dancer, yet I transitioned into choreography then as a Creative Director. All of these creative elements are brought out of being a dancer. Directing is something that comes out of understanding movement and choreography. Directing movement is directing a dance piece. — Laurieann Gibson

For me, it's very important if I do action movies and I have a stunt person, to work with them. Not only by memorizing the choreography but also it's important to study that individual and it's imperative for that individual to study you because you're not playing two different people, you're playing the same person. — Zoe Saldana

You are not a female or a male - you are a dancer. And when I started going into choreography I became part of a team of people making movies. I wasn't a woman choreographer. I was a choreographer. — Anne Fletcher

I don't want people to think about one common thing. Coda is non-discursive, just like choreography for the stage. So each audience member's thoughts about it, or better yet, their feelings, will be different. Moreover, images contain so much information that one can see things that the next person won't notice. As a result, people will surely think about Coda in dissimilar ways. — Martine Epoque

My choreography suits men very well, and the women who can do it are damn hard, strong dancers. — Paula Abdul

Guitar playing, as currently understood, has more to do with sports than it does to do with music. It's an Olympic challenge type of situation. The challenges are in the realm of speed, redundancy, choreography, and grooming ... clouds of educated gnat-notes. — Frank Zappa

I had actually been on tour in Japan and I had my own world tour that I was doing. I was used to doing a show for an hour, so I was always learning choreography. — Christina Milian

I kind of lost interest in the classical dance. I was very much interested in the modern choreography. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

Chaos comes before all principles of order & entropy, it's neither a god nor a maggot, its idiotic desires encompass & define every possible choreography, all meaningless aethers & phlogistons: its masks are crystallizations of its own facelessness, like clouds. — Hakim Bey

Well we've got to do a lot of kung fu choreography, which was really cool. Like I have, you know, like the big hammer that I use, kind of like a staff in a sense. So I get to use that like a really cool weapon. Kung fu style. And it's just really fun to get to learn that and execute it in a way that looks cool on screen. It just feels really rewarding. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Basically it starts with four months of training, just basic stretching, kicking and punching. Then you come to the choreography and getting ready to put the dance together. — Keanu Reeves

I think of writing
particularly of writing picture books
as a kind of choreography. A picture book must have pace and movement and pattern. Pictures and text should, together, create the pattern, rather than simply run parallel. — Beatrice Schenk De Regniers

Meanwhile, things continue to slide: standards slip, curricula are politicized and watered down, and, despite all the emphasis on schooling at every level of society, the dance of education remains locked into the dreary choreography of one step forward, two steps back. Education remains education, which is to say a fairly private affair. No matter how much more widespread so-called higher education has become, only a small - one is inclined to say an infinitesimal - minority seems capable of taking serious advantage of it, at any rate during the standard years of schooling. — Joseph Epstein

I tell my workshop students, 'I want you to think of yourselves as artists. Then, when you're writing, you're painting, you're crafting, you're making a design, you're sculpting, you're creating choreography, sound, a sound script.' — Juan Felipe Herrera

Sometimes I go and I'll look at people's comments and then responses, covers, choreography and fan videos and after a couple hours it's like, uhhh this is a little like ... I'm like don't indulge in right now. — Jhene Aiko

I believe that friendship, like love, of which it is a particular kind, requires nearly as much art as a successful choreography. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Then solar systems, galaxies, supernovas, infinite space itself will become elements of a final masterwork
a never-ending festival, a celestial amusement park in which every exploding star and spinning electron is part of the empyreal choreography. — Steven Millhauser

I worked with the same trainer that worked with Denzel Washington in THe Hurricane. It was three months of training, five days a week, 4 to 5 hours a day. This was followed by a month of choreography. — Wentworth Miller

I am absolutely desperate to do an action movie. And not to blow my own trumpet or anything, but I actually think I'm good at it. I did it all. I was really into the routines and the choreography. I used to dance when I was younger, and so I think that came in handy. — Lily James

While you're worrying about becoming famous, there is someone out there putting in work and not wasting a second of their time. Which person will you be? — Torron-Lee Dewar

I was enough of an acrobat and a gymnast and a dancer and everything else so that I could handle the kung fu, because it's just choreography. — David Carradine

The thunderstorm she's wearing, the clouds, the lightning flashing down her legs and the sound effects are no big deal. But the 1G rain is a serious engineering problem. For all of us, when we have experienced rain, it has been during a Direct Interface Lifetime, in subjective conditions of 1-Gravity. Lunar rain, at 1/6th Gravity, just doesn't look real. Therefore, her dress has a hollow cylindrical 5K spin-2 graviton Field, to make the rain fall at 1G without weighing her down a metric ton. If it's engineered right, she shouldn't feel a bit heavier. That's almost 6990-megawatts right there. The other 10-megawatts or so is mostly rain choreography. — @hg47

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

The chance to work on Broadway choreography as opposed to having to deliver Broadway choreography can be two distinct things. — Damian Woetzel

If I wanted to do clothes or if I wanted to make a building or design a choreography, you are able to do that - they are all under a similar kind of design umbrella. — Zaha Hadid

'The Company' was interesting. I didn't love it, although it might be compelling to someone who isn't a dancer. There wasn't a lot of dialogue, and you were just kind of observing the creative process of choreography and in class. — Misty Copeland

It was so much more. You allowed your feelings to spill onto the stage in a way everyone in that room could relate to. Angela inspired it, perhaps, but the specifics you chose made a universal statement. That is the art of choreography. — Kathryn Craft

The evolution of Parkour sort of happens with time and age as you change, and the body has a certain memory of Parkour. There is a sort of thing that remains intrinsic, but then the choreography will adapt to whatever the necessity of each particular film needs. — David Belle

But I find something compelling in the game's choreography, the way one move implies the next. The kings are an apt metaphor for human beings: utterly constrained by the rules of the game, defenseless against bombardment from all sides, able only to temporarily dodge disaster by moving one step in any direction. — Jennifer DuBois

It's weird when you see pieces of choreography that were done for you 15 or 20 years ago and now they are being done by another dance company. — Mikhail Baryshnikov