Quotes from Judith Jamison

If people all over the world, year after year, request that you do 'Revelations,' you do 'Revelations.'

People come to see beauty, and I dance to give it to them.

If you look at a dancer in silence, his or her body will be the music. If you turn the music on, that body will become an extension of what you're hearing.

You don't enter a dance studio and say "I can't do that." If you do, then why are you in the studio in the first place?

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.

Learn the craft of knowing how to open your heart and to turn on your creativity. There's a light inside of you.

My wonderful editor, Jackie Onassis, asked me to write a book that I wanted to write. I said, 'Look, it's not going to be scandalized. I'm not going to talk about anybody like a dog. I'm going to say the positiveness of my life, and talk about those who have contributed to the way I've been going, and that's that.'

I tell young people that people aren't just going to flock to you as your mentors. You have to seek them out. It could be your next-door neighbor; it could be somebody upstairs from you, somebody down the block from you. An aunt or an uncle. Some relative. A parent.

We're dancing from here, from inside, not from outside. You could look at anybody throwing their leg and kick their leg up and a million pirouettes and do all kinds of tricks and stuff like that. But that's not what dance is really about.

As a dancer, you really try to stay true to whatever the choreographer/artistic director is giving you. So, now the shoe is on the other foot and I have to trust everyone else - I have to trust the dancer. As I was trusted as a dancer, I trust my dancers.

I want to know who you are as a person, and then I want you to develop as a whole human being.

I went to an audition for a Harry Belafonte Roaring Twenties special for choreographer Donald McKayle, but I failed.

I believe God has a path for me. He's always had a path for me, and I've always been in the right place at the right time - not because of my efforts, but because of my preparation and because of the guides that I have, the mentors that I have, the spiritual walkers that I've had all my life.

Dancers use their bodies in extraordinary ways, so we are chronically pre-arthritic, because of how we use our muscles and our bones.

Learn the craft of knowing how to open your heart and to turn on your creativity. There's a light inside of you.

Since babyhood, I've always evolved from one thing to another. My mother gave me ballet lessons at 6 as part of her enthusiasm for the arts and for life. We went to museums, to the theater. While her own talent was untapped, she worked for church causes.

It's a real gift to have a husband and wife in the company that love each other and that work together. They check on each other emotionally and physically. That's beautiful to me.

Dancing is bigger than the physical body. Think bigger than that. When you extend your arm, it doesn't stop at the end of your fingers, because you're dancing bigger than that. You're dancing spirit.

Strive for perfection. Nobody's going to be perfect on this earth. But strive for perfection.

The way Alvin Ailey has transformed modern dance and dance in general is the fact of variety. It's a cornucopia of ways to move. There are choreographers in the company as - as diverse, as different from each other as Donald McKayle and Bill T. Jones, or Jawole Zollar and John Butler, Lar Lubovitch, you know, and Judith Jamison.

I was a protege; by the age of 10, I was studying with ballet choreographer Anthony Tudor in a class of adults.