Lucinda Childs Quotes

"Light Over Water" is the longest piece I have ever composed. It is a landmark in my personal struggle to create large forms. I feel that it is by and large a formally successful work, though I was constrained to write a piece at least fifty minutes long, and there are some dead spots in the music where I think I was simply marking time. However, I think when the dance is in motion, the formal problem is nonexistent.

I am just a choreographer, and I am trying to make productions, not dance concerts.

I disagree with the idea that modern dancers are cold or unemotional.

If the simple positions of ballet are demonstrated straight on, they seem quite dull and lifeless, but when put on a diagonal, they begin to take on all kinds of possibilities.

I use geometric and mathematical ideas to organize material, but those are tools. The purpose of the work is not to expose that at all, but to arrive at some kind of expressiveness.

I do not like to be thought of as avant-garde or some kind of didactic artist.

The relationship between the audience and the dancers goes through many different stages. Someone seeing my work for the first time may or may not pick up on that.

I no longer need to have what I see as the surface of the dance so connected to the underlying structure.

The diagonal gives a three-dimensional feeling to dancers that cannot be achieved when they are only front and back. On the diagonal, more movement is automatically visible.

I like large sounds and very complex sonorities, and I also tend to opt for creating a feeling of vast space. I could achieve this effect either by using a symphony orchestra, which for a dance piece is pretty much impossible these days, or by using a synthesizer on multi-channel tape and a superb sound system, to get that same sensation of expansiveness and depth.

I do not like a haphazard connection between the dances and the music.

I think dancing is an emotional experience.