Director Quotes

I love working with Alicia Keys, because it's not just the ability to do the dance to me; I think it's the ability to interpret it that excites me the most.

I like to always remind my dancers about ways to avoid injury. One of the basic ways to avoid injury is to always make sure to stretch and warm up your body. This will loosen up your muscles, which will help to avoid common strain injuries such as shin splints and ankle strains.

I enjoy getting an artist at the beginning stages, and then I'm able to pull out something that is so pure and actually create their individual style. From how they pick up the microphone, to how to look on the stage, to their dance steps, to their talk, their opinions, to what they wear, so it real

I dance but I also work out. I run, do strength training... you name it. I've got to!

I believe it's extremely important to include some other type of fitness activity in your training, so cross training will help you to avoid injury when you are dancing.

I am trained, and I did do 'The Nutcracker' in its right form, but at the time, they told me I was black and I'd never be in 'Swan Lake.' I went through all those prejudices in the ballet community, and I still emerged wonderfully trained and found my way to Alvin Ailey where there were familiar fac

For me, a dancer is part of an artist's entertainment - 'backup dancer' isn't even in my vocabulary.

Everyone has the notion that hip-hop is messy and loose, but there's also another level to it.

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 p

'Born This Way' is shaping up to be creative ecstasy.

'Boom' is my heart. The 'kack' is my soul. Apparently when I choreographed I didn't realize that I said 'boom-kack' 'boom-kack.' I had no idea I was doing it and then I realized that it's every time I felt like the fight in my soul - the boom and the kack - was like my heart. It was like the love of

Back in the early days like for the Temptations, Supremes and Four Tops, artist development was alive in record companies. Every artist had a moment to develop the record visually. When the web took over and camera phones, it stripped the artists of the power to figure it out. So there's a need to b

Artist development is something that I've been passionate about from my days at Uptown and Motown Records.

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.

When I got lucky with Dean, I ended up with 16 years with one of the truly great performers of all time. He was the greatest performer I'd ever been around, bar none.

I did honest television. Real, live, honest television. That's what I did best.

There's a saying among prospectors: 'Go out looking for one thing, and that's all you'll ever find.'

Sometimes you have to lie. One often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit.

We're not as materialistic and income-tax conscious as we think. At the moment our superstitions are tucked away, but come out sometimes in strange ways sex crimes, black masses.

There is the danger of over preparation, of loss of spontaneity; over rehearsal is the most terrible thing you can imagine. We do have a very close association between costume and set designer, though. And the cameraman is very important, of course.

The written word is the basic of everything. Most important, the idea, and after that, the dialogue. You can rehash the dialogue as you go along, it 's disgraceful to have to do this, but now and again you have no choice.

The reflection of the flame in the glass seems to be touching the hand. And you feel the helpless fear of these dismembered parts. This sort of thing can hardly be visualized at the script stage.

The process is very gradual, you see. At first there's the tainted stage; they know what will eventually happen to them if they go on but they say, 'Oh God, don't do it to me do it again, please, please.'

One blob of red in the wrong place and the audience isn't looking at the hero, they're looking at a patch of curtain (or something similar) and your whole effect is lost.

He 's ruthless only because of his ideals. Unfortunately he doesn't succeed. The thing fails and gets out of hand and takes charge of him. Idealism is the only excuse he could have and it's a great excuse.

Certainly Dracula did bring a hell of a lot of joy to a hell of a lot of women. And if this erotic quality hadn't come out we'd have been very disappointed.

Do I believe in the supernatural? Oh yes, certainly. I can't believe, I can't accept that you die and that's the end. Physically maybe it is a fact. But there's something about the mind that's more than that.

Oh, yeah, I love DVD's. I don't have what you'd call an extensive collection, maybe a couple of hundred or so. But I have something on almost all the time.

In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behaviour and we sculpt light.

If I could be anyone, it would be Brad Pitt.