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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.

Judith Jamison

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I feel an obligation to use black dancers because there must be more opportunities for them, but not because I'm a black choreographer talking to black people.

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As much as I love to travel and be on stage and perform, I knew at a very young age that I wanted to be a choreographer and a director.

Travel Love Age

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I have two best friends - the dancer and choreographer Bobby Newberry and my former bandmate Kimberley Wyatt.

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I'm a very competitive person, and I always competed with myself. Every year, I'd take six weeks with my band, crew and choreographer to put a new show together. We'd spend eight hours per day, seven days per week putting a show together to beat the last year's show.

Barbara Mandrell

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I once played a character called Mr. Jonathan in something called 'Razzle Dazzle.' I was a choreographer of children's pageants. That was something I never imagined doing. It did great in Australia.

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My whole process is based on meditation as well as listening really closely to what the director says and what the choreographer says. I try to stay in the immediate present reality with my partners on stage, give and take reality.

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The number of e-mails and letters that I get from choreographers, from sculptors, from composers who are being inspired by science is huge.

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I toured with Lady Gaga, and her choreographer is incredibly talented and develops some crazy routines. Lady Gaga is very involved in the dancing, too, and she always wants to have creative input. I had an incredible time with her!

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You always want to please your choreographer, director. Dancers are just that way.

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Martin Joyce is a beautiful dancer and an amazing choreographer. He choreographed the Mulberry dance film I was in, 'From London with Love.' A truly talented man.

Love Art Amazing

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While dancing for me was fun, becoming a choreographer was not something I wanted to do.

While Wanted Want

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Initially, dancing for me was just for pocket money. The dancers are paid well and you get paid on a daily basis. Eventually when I got promoted as an assistant choreographer I was getting paid more. This was during my college days.

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The choreographer for the Milton Berle show wanted me to audition. I walked away from that.

Way Wanted Want

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I think, as a choreographer and an action designer, you're constantly giving your characters problems to overcome. That's what makes it fun for choreography. But it also makes it fun for the audience to see them solve those puzzles and how they are as a human being.

Design Your You

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The thing is that when you are a director, you need to be involved in a lot of different fields. You must be a psychologist, an architecture expert; you must be a choreographer.

Denis Villeneuve

Architecture You Us

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When you're a choreographer and you put so much into a routine that's emotionally driven, those are like my ideas and my little babies that I have here and then I put them out there and they're there to be judged and looked at. When it's all over, it's just such a relief.

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The Horny Toad in Cave Creek has great food. When I'm in Arizona, I have at least one meal there. I have a daughter who lives out there, and Dee Dee Wood, who was the choreographer on 'Mary Poppins,' lives out there. I still get out there once in a while, but not in the summer.

Great Food Wood

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I never danced a step in my life so naturally. My first motion picture was a musical, and Bob Fosse was the choreographer. I didn't exactly dance for Fosse, I just did the best that I could to do what he taught us to do.

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It's an incredible dilemma to be an artist of color and to always be in denial about that, saying, 'I'm a choreographer first and then I'm black,' when in fact, that's not the case. I'm black first and then I'm also a choreographer.

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I'm not a good choreographer: I can't remember what I put down.

Donald O'Connor

Good T Remember

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.

An action choreographer is kind of like a dance choreographer. You choreograph the moves and you let the director, cinematographer take into positioning their cameras.

Action choreographer is like talking. When you talk, you have a rhythm. When you act, you have a rhythm. When you're moving your body, you have a rhythm. So as an actor, as a choreographer, the objective is trying to blend everything in - into - ultimately back into that character.

From my experience as an actor, choreographer, action director, and producer, I understand the elements and the dynamics of being a film maker.

In fact, one of my good friends is an amazing Bollywood choreographer. She once asked me to perform in one of her shows in college. So, I have danced to the Bollywood music and it was great fun. It is tiring and requires a certain level of fitness.

I have fully retired as a choreographer. I do not have the patience now to make actors learn their steps. For me, that ship has sailed. I have enjoyed 22 years of it.

I was chosen over British and French choreographers to work on 'Bombay Dreams.'

Even as one of the best choreographers in the country, I was criticised for a lot of things I have done in life.

When I became a choreographer, I was not assisting any choreographer. I was assisting the director Mansoor Ali Khan for 'Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar.' I was the fourth assistant director.

On the videos for '1234' and 'My Moon My Man' I wanted to make the songs visible. And, really, what way can you make sound visible other than good old naive dancing? I was working with a choreographer, but I'm not a dancer. Any notion of elegance is impossible with me.

Growing up, I was a dancer. I wanted to be a choreographer.

I have the most respect for Zach Woodlee. He is one of my favorite - and one of the most capable - choreographers out there right now.

Harry Shum, Jr.

I'm heavily involved in the creative with choreographer Christopher Scott. I go to rehearsals with 'Glee' and then practice with LXD till about midnight.

Harry Shum, Jr.

You get used to working with one choreographer. You kind of get stuck in that vein and you work your way out of it, picking up someone else's style, their flavor. It takes a bit of time.

We dance to difference genres such as krumping, ballet and hip-hop, together with invited foreign choreographers who are well-known internationally.

I collaborated on most of my dance numbers, literally 50/50, with the choreographers I worked with.

Jessie Matthews

The people that have inspired me the most were dancers and choreographers. Even growing up, if I dealt with any pressure to be a certain way, I knew that as an artistic lane, dancing was the one that was a little more freed up - like, no one in my family is really doing that; I can be that person.

It's easier for me to go to Russia and train with top coaches and choreographers there than go to Colorado Springs and train with 14 of my competitors.

I design all of my costumes. I like to go out there and feel like I have contributed to every part of what I do. I choose the music, the choreographer, I've obviously chosen my coach, my costumes - all if that falls under my realm of power, my realm of influence.

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.

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

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

It's probably what I'm most interested in as a choreographer: how I can alter and shift and develop the structure of a piece and of the space.

George Balanchine is my role model because his work is so varied. You can see two ballets of his and not even realize that they are by the same choreographer.

I've admired Lawrence master from his choreographer days. I love how he experiments and makes it work. I like his attention to detail and the intrigue in his movies.

A choreographer deals with the movement that you create, and with a creative director it's about the story, the stage, the lighting, the costuming, executing someone's idea, choosing how far to go or how little to go, and blending it so that you feel it, you're emotionally effected.

Laurieann Gibson

My background is in modern dance. I was a dancer and a choreographer before I was a director, and in dance, you can't cheat. Your leg goes up in the air, or it doesn't. So when I direct, I'm a big preparer.

Lesli Linka Glatter

My mother was a choreographer, so music has always been around.

A good choreographer is one that's going to collaborate, teach, guide - everything. The wonderful thing on 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' was that we had Philip Kwok - he choreographed John Woo's 'Hard Boiled,' and in the '70s, he was a martial arts actor, stunt man, fighter, choreographer in Hong Kong.