Judith Jamison

“At 10, I could walk down the street and see over everybody's head. I don't remember being little or having to look up at people. I think I was born 5 feet 10. It's not that I felt especially tall. I was wondering when everybody else was going to catch up.”

“I've danced all over the world, and people are people. We cannot cut off from each other in life. In order to lead, you can't do that.”

“I don't think of myself as a leader. I am, but I don't think of myself that way. I'm not trying to belittle what I do, but I think of myself as a dancer first. I'll always be a dancer.”

“As long as there are dancers around who love to dance, there will be an Alvin Ailey American Dance Company. We miss him so much, but he's alive as soon as you see a dancer hit the stage.”

“Concert dance is the hardest kind of dance. We tour constantly, around the world, year in and year out. It just doesn't work for everybody. It's the lifestyle, it's the stamina, it's the love, it's the dedication, it's the commitment, it's all those words.”

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

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

“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.”

“Maybe it's a generational thing, but I never wanted to be the best black dancer in the world. I just wanted to be the best.”

“I believe in being prepared. I'm going to say that. Pray, prepare, proceed.”

“One thing I cannot stand is when people say, 'Hi, how are you?' and they don't wait to hear how I am. They're just going through the motions. I say to people: 'Keep it human. Keep it alive. Don't turn into a robot.' You have to hear what the other person is saying clearly.”

“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 haven't had a family, but I don't think of that as a sacrifice: my dancers are my family.”

“My idea for the Jamison Project was rather like a pickup company. The idea was to give the dancers a taste of the menu. Today, dancers need to try as many companies as possible without having a drop-dead loyalty to me or anyone else. They like to have the leeway to go their own way.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“The word 'suffering' is not in my vocabulary.”

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

“You wake up white, and you think about certain things every day. You wake up black, and you think about certain things. You wake up Chinese, and you think certain things - but those things aren't major. What's major is that you are good at your craft.”