Choreographers Carnival Quotes

Carnival is past millennia's way of sensing the world as one great communal performance. This sense of the world, liberating one from fear, bringing the world maximally close to a person and bringing one person maximally close to another (everything is drawn into the zone of free familiar contact), with its joy at change and its joyful relativity, is opposed to that one-sided and gloomy official seriousness which is dogmatic and hostile to evolution and change, which seeks to absolutize a given condition of existence or a given social order. From precisely that sort of seriousness did the carnival sense of the world liberate man. ~ Mikhail Bakhtin

Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills. ~ David Mamet

During a carnival, men put masks over their masks. ~ Xavier Forneret

everything resulting from socio-hierarchical inequality or any other form of inequality among people (including age). All distance between people is suspended, and a special carnival category goes into effect: free and familiar contact among people. ~ Mikhail Bakhtin

Life Is Like A Carnival Ride, It Has Its Ups, Its Downs, And All Its Twerks. But We All Know That In The End It Was Fun And Worth The Wild Ride ~ Terrin White

I like it too," Angelo said. "I love this country. Much you and anybody, and you know it."

"I know it," Prew said.

"But I still hate this country. You love the Army. But I dont love the Army. This country's Army is why I hate this country. What did this country ever do for me? Gimme a right to vote for men I cant elect? You can have it. Gimme a right to work at a job I hate? You can have that too. Then tell I'm a Citizen of the greatest richest country on earth, if I dont believe it look at Park Avenue. Carnival prizes. All carnival prizes. [..] They shouldnt teach their immigrants' kids all about democracy unless they mean to let them have a little bit of it, it ony makes for trouble. Me and the United States is dissociating our alliance as of right now, until the United States can find time to read its own textbooks a little."

Prew thought, a little sickly, of the little book, The Man Without A Country that his mother used to read to him so often, and how the stern patriotic judge condemned the man to live on a warship where no one could ever mention home to him the rest of his whole life, and how he had always felt that pinpoint of pleased righteous anger at seeing the traitor get what he deserved. ~ James Jones

I stretched my arms towards the sky like blades of tall grass
The sun beat between my shoulders like carnival drums
I sat still in hopes that it would help my wings grow
So then I could really be fly
And then she arrived
Like day break inside a railway tunnel
Like the new moon, like a diamond in the mines
Like high noon to a drunkard, sudden
She made my heart beat in a now-now time signature
Her skinny canvas for ultraviolet brushstrokes
She was the sun's painting
She was a deep cognac color
Her eyes sparkled like lights along the new city
She lips pursed as if her breath was too sweet
And full for her mouth to hold
I said, "You are the beautiful, the stress of mathematics."
I said, "For you, I would peel open the clouds like new fruit
And give you lightning and thunder as a dowry
I would make the sky shed all of it's stars, light and rain
And I would clasp the constellations across your waist
And I would make the heavens your cape
And they would be pleased to cover you
They would be pleased to cover you
May I please, cover you, please ~ Mos Def

So far I'm not seeing a lot of difference between me and a carnival con-man. ~ Richelle Mead

I think we all wear some kind of mask. There are masks that shield us from others, but there are masks that embolden us, and you see that in carnival. The shiest child puts on a mask and can do anything and be anybody. ~ Edwidge Danticat

I felt the kind of acute anticipation that a child might experience at a carnival, where each lurid attraction incites fantastic speculations, while unexpected desires arise for something which has no specific qualities in the imagination yet seems to be only a few steps away. ~ Thomas Ligotti

At three o'clock in the afternoon, all the fashionable world at Nice may be seen on the Promenade des Anglais - a charming place, for the wide walk, bordered with palms, flowers, and tropical shrubs, is bounded on one side by the sea, on the other by the grand drive, lined with hotels and villas, while beyond lie orange orchards and the hills. Many nations are represented, many languages spoken, many costumes worn, and on a sunny day the spectacle is as gay and brilliant as a carnival. Haughty English, lively French, sober Germans, handsome Spaniards, ugly Russians, meek Jews, free-and-easy Americans, all drive, sit, or saunter here, chatting over the news, and criticizing the latest celebrity who has arrived - Ristori or Dickens, Victor Emmanuel or the Queen of the Sandwich Islands. ~ Louisa May Alcott

It wasn't chance at all, Gilly. People are yearning creatures. They imagine and strive and hope. Stories about an enchanted band of vagabonds existed before the Carnival itself. But those fairy tales become the focal point of billions of daydreams, and eventually those daydreams condensed like vapor into something real. The Carnival only exists because you want it to, you and everyone else. So why's it peculiar that, when you wanted to find it, a path came into existence too? ~ Kristopher Reisz

Not so much for Carnival?" I asked Ben playfully, hooking my arm through his.
"Not so much for driving through Carnival," Ben amended.
"Too tough for you?"
"I travel with you. Nothing's too tough for me."
"Not even that guy?"
He turned to look, and the minute his attention was diverted, I raced to the elevators.
"Hey!" Ben cried, and ran after me, but I dove and pressed the button first.
"Yes!" I cheered.
"Loser," Ben said.
"Actually, I just won. Let's go up and change, then we can hit the Samba Parade."
"Change? But I like you just the way you are."
"You are such a dork."
Ben nodded, accepting the title with grace as the elevator arrived. ~ Hilary Duff

Animals cannot speak, but can you and I not speak for them and represent them? Let us all feel their silent cry of agony and let us all help that cry to be heard in the world. ~ Rukmini Devi Arundale

The work equalises the emotions, and enables the two submerged to surface in series of unpredictable configurations. Work is the constant carnival; words, the rhythm and pace of two, who mine undeveloped seams of the earth and share the treasure. ~ Gillian Rose

The carnival of carnage that takes place every day, month and year in the realm of industry; the thousands of useful lives that are annually sacrificed to the Moloch of greed; the blood tribute paid by labor to capitalism, brings forth no shout for vengeance and reparation; no tear, except from the family and friends of the victims. ~ D. Douglas Wilson

Choreographers, historically, are born, not made - their talents drive them to it. ~ Robert Gottlieb

The vast carnival of cruelty called animal exploitation goes on and on
and it is all so needless, even counter-productive. There is already an adequate (often superior) non-animal substitute for virtually everything obtained by animal suffering and slaughter ... ~ H. Jay Dinshah

With a country of rare picturesqueness for a background, a people of rare beauty for actors, everybody more or less permeated with the artistic instinct and everybody more or less writing poetry - California has a pageant for breakfast, a fiesta for luncheon and a carnival for dinner. They are always electing queens. In fact any girl in California who hasn't been a queen of something before she's twenty-one is a poor prune. ~ Inez Haynes Irwin

There is a law governing the meeting of the races. When a powerful race meets a helpless race, two things happen. First, there is a carnival of crime. Cruelty and oppression take place: some men in each race become hard-hearted. But the reverse also happens thereafter; goodness and mercy are developed; certain men become saints and heroes. - John Jay Chapman, The ~ Gilbert King

A political convention is after all not a meeting of a corporation's board of directors; it is a fiesta, a carnival, a pig-rooting, horse-snorting, band-playing, voice-screaming medieval get-together of greed, practical lust, compromised idealism, career-advancement, meeting, feud, vendetta, conciliation, of rabble-rousers, fist fights (as it used to be), embraces, drunks (again as it used to be) and collective rivers of animal sweat. ~ Norman Mailer

What is this enemy that scripture calls "the world?" Is it drinking and dancing and smoking? Is it going to the movies or playing cards? That is a shallow and ridiculous approach to holiness. It numbs us to the fact that good and evil are much more serious. No, the world is not a place or a set of behaviors. It is any system built by our collective sin. It is all our false selves coming together to reward and destroy each other. Take all the posers out there, put them together in an office, or a club, or a church and what you get is what the scriptures mean by "the world." The world is a carnival of counterfeits - counterfeit battles, counterfeit adventures, counterfeit beauties. Men should think of it as a corruption of their strength. "Battle your way to the top," says the World, "and you are a man." Why is it then that the men that get there are often the emptiest, most frightened, prideful posers around? ~ John Eldredge

Don't believe what the spiritual sharks and clever carnival hustlers tell you about fearless living - they lie. ~ Guy Finley

Focus is passé. In the modern world we want to feel everything all the time. There is no point in just taking a walk in the park when we can also listen to headphones, munch on a hot dog, crank up our vibrating soles to the maximum, and check out the passing carnival of humanity. Our choices about the creed of a new world order: stimulation! Thought and creativity have become subservient to the singular goal of saturating our senses. ~ Neil Strauss

The real self of an artiste lies in art, so when an artiste performs, all the pain, trauma and tension get released through art, be it dancing, painting, singing, writing or even martial arts. ~ Mrinalini Sarabhai

It's nice when grown people whisper to each other under the covers. Their ecstasy is more a leaf-sigh than bray and the body is the vehicle, not the point. They reach, grown people, for something beyond, way beyond and way, way down underneath tissue. They are remembering while they whisper the carnival dolls they won and the Baltimore boats they never sailed on. The pears they let hang on the limb because if they plucked them, they would be gone from there and who else would see that ripeness if they took it away for themselves? How could anybody passing by see them and imagine for themselves what the flavour would be like? Breathing and murmuring under covers both of them have washed and hung out on the line, in a bed they chose together and kept together nevermind one leg was propped on a 1916 dictionary, and the mattress, curved like a preacher's palm asking for witnesses in His name's sake, enclosed them each and every night and muffled their whispering, old-time love. They are under the covers because they don't have to look at themselves anymore; there is no stud's eye, no chippie glance to undo them. They are inward toward the other, bound and joined by carnival dolls and the steamers that sailed from ports they never saw. That is what is beneath their undercover whispers. ~ Toni Morrison

Through the clouds of smoke I seemed to see all old Asia before me, and the adventures of past years behind me. A carnival of old camp-scenes danced before my mind's eye, expiring like shooting-stars in the night - merry songs which came to an end among other mountains and the dying sound of strings and flutes. And I was surprised that I had not had enough of these things and that I was not tired of the light of camp-fires. ~ Sven Hedin

It's like a dance, to choreograph a fight is like a dance. It's very specific. You have to carefully plan it out. Because if someone gets hurt, then we didn't do our job, someone screwed up. The fight choreographers and the actors involved, we messed up somewhere. ~ Bryan Cranston

Dartmouth Winter Carnival opens, proving once again that bitter cold is no obstacle to going completely out of control. ~ Lisa Birnbach

Show business is and has always been a depraved carnival. ~ David Mamet

A Boat O beautiful was the werewolf in his evil forest. We took him to the carnival and he started crying when he saw the Ferris wheel. Electric green and red tears flowed down his furry cheeks. He looked like a boat out on the dark water. ~ Richard Brautigan

I get into the studio and I try to make visible what's in the choreographer's mind. Sometimes a choreographer wants you to have an idea, and sometimes you are the idea. ~ Angel Corella

Welcome to the dark carnival,Brother >:o) ~ Gamzee Makara-Homestuck

I dance not to entertain but to help people better understand each other. Because through dance I have experienced the wordless joy of freedom, I seek it more fully now for my people and for all people everywhere. ~ Pearl Primus

There has been a marvelous joyous carnival of mourning for Edith Piaf and Jean Coctaeau, and it was real! They died as they had lived, with style and grace and their proper eccentricity; and Paris loves anybody who can live anarchically and be delightful entertainment at the same time. So do I. ~ Katherine Anne Porter

The one reason people don't take dance seriously is because a lot of choreographers don't take dance seriously. ~ Mark Morris

I've always preferred the city at night. I believe that San Judas, or any city, belongs to the people who sleep there. Or maybe they don't sleep - some don't - but they live there. Everybody else is just a tourist.
Venice, Italy, for instance, pulls in a millions tourists for their own Carnival season but the actual local population is only a couple of hundred thousand. Lots of empty canals and streets at night, especially when you get away from the big hotels, and the residents pretty much have it to themselves when tourist season slows during the winter.
Jude has character - everybody agrees on that. It also has that thing I like best about a city: You can never own it, but it you treat it with respect it will eventually invite you in and make you one of its true citizens. But like I said, you've got to live there. If you're never around after the bars close, or at the other end of the night as the early workers get up to start another day and the coffee shops and news agents raise their security gates, then you don't really know the place, do you? ~ Tad Williams

One year Halloween came on October 24, three hours after midnight. At that time, James Nightshade of 97 Oak Street was thirteen years, eleven months, twenty-three days old. Next door, William Halloway was thirteen years, eleven months, and twenty-four days old. Both touched toward fourteen; it almost trembled in their hands. And that was the October week when they grew up overnight, and were never so young any more ... ~ Ray Bradbury

What makes people and companies and artistic directors and choreographers interested in working with dancers is the ability to kind of let go of everything you think you know and be a blank canvas. ~ Misty Copeland