Bill T. Jones Quotes

Because art does for me what religion does-- it organizes a seemingly chaotic world. Because it is my way of making sense of the world and its changes.

Art - when it is really doing what it should do - teaches abstract thinking; it teaches teamwork; it teaches people to actually think about things that they cannot see.

We can win.
We can lose.
We can fall down.
We can get up and do it over again, better.
We can go for it as if we have nothing to lose, knowing we have everything to lose.
...
We can tear up a dance floor and put it all back together again.
We can talk loud in public.
We can be fierce.
We can be small.
We can be mighty.
We can be too much.
We can be just enough, just in time.
We can.
We have to.

We are part of each other and part of something bigger than our own egos. An artist should ... bring into the world some vision. Dancers should ask, "What is their work in the service of?"

Slavery is a memory of something we cannot remember, and yet we cannot forget.

The body is a reservoir of all sorts of tensions and dark forces. And it's also the potential source of amazing energy. This thing wants to live. It is a powerful engine. The brain (is) a reservoir of images, dreams, fears, associations, language. And its potential we can't even begin to understand. Movement begins to negotiate the distance between the brain and the body and it can be surprising what we learn about each other.

This is what I call participation in the world of ideas. That is what art-making is.

My friends and family had put the bedroom back together and I woke the next morning thinking, for one brief second, that it was just another beautiful early-spring day. As I sat up, though, my body began to weep even before my mind recognized the cause for grieving. The world would never be the same. Everything I would make from that day on would recall how it had changed. Everything I did for myself would be in the name of what we had been.