Merce Cunningham

“What really made me think about space and begin to think about ways to use it was Einstein's statement that there are no fixed points in space. Everything in the universe is moving all the time.”

“The use of chance operations opened out my way of working. The body tends to be habitual. The use of chance allowed us to find new ways to move and to put movements together that would not otherwise have been available to us. It revealed possibilities that were always there except that my mind hadn't seen them.”

“In using chance operations, the mind is enriched.”

“All these dismal things that are going on in the world - the isolation and the sickness and the governments and the pollution - it's so frightful, over the whole world.”

“Fortunately, dance has been what's interested me all my life. So whether I am faced with incapacities or not, it still absorbs me.”

“I use the computer as a tool. Like chance or the camera or the other tools I've used, it can open my eye to other ways of seeing or of making dances. It's not simply to do a trick.”