Quotes from Ann Reinking

You know, theater is either heaven or hell. There's no middle.

I love doing concert choreography because everything is about your vision, come heck or high water. Of course, you also take the blame for everything, but it's wonderful to be able to make up dance for dance's sake.

Herb was a great husband.

People always remark on how I'm not as tall as I look in film. I tell them about the time I saw Lassie on a studio lot, and she was this tiny scruffy dog. Film makes you larger than life.

If you can't trust, it's harder to love and if you can't love it's harder to be happy.

Working with people who have a lot of heart is just the best. You can hire it, but you cannot teach it. It's either there or it's not.

I was up for parts in 'Charlie's Angels' and 'Three's Company,' but other people got them. At the time I was very disappointed because I knew the shows would be tremendous hits. But if I had done either I would not have done the following: 'Chorus Line,' 'Dancin',' 'Chicago,' 'Movie Movie,' 'All That Jazz' and 'Annie.'

I like meeting people from other walks of life and finding out about other worlds, and knowing that I'm fairly adept at one world and really stupid in many others.

'Dancin' was exceptionally significant. I was in an original Broadway show and nominated for a Tony.

Sometimes I gave conflicting emotions because it's been going on for so long now, but then I see somebody dancing real well and it just comes back like an old love. The flame ignites again.

You can always work around this, that or the other, but if everybody's in there because they love it and they just want to do it the best they can, that's an ideal situation that you don't always get.

I wanted a way to pass on all the gifts, all the instruction that I've been given.

It's a good idea to have your career intact and then have children.

In sixth grade my teacher said that we had to do a talent show. You could sing or recite a poem... I went a wrote a little sketch for myself called 'Our Big World' about how many ways you could use a scarf.

You get to a certain point in your life and you think you can do it all. And then you do do it all, and then you have to top yourself.

Bob was beloved by people, very intelligent people, for their entire lives, and he had tremendous loyalty from everyone. I know he has a reputation for being abusive, but he's not.

Bob was very influenced by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. That huge type of creativity which takes nothing and makes it into something very wrenching.

Michael Bennett, Tommy Tune and Agnes de Mille fought to be director-choreographers. They were just not going to do it any other way because the choreographer is so often at the bottom of the creative totem pole when you put a show together. So with that power you get a more direct point-of-view and that helps something called style.

You have to have tunnel vision as a dancer to get to where you're going. But once you get there, you have to save yourself by spreading your horizons. It's the paradox of this profession. The very thing that makes you very good will destroy you.

It was sad to leave 'Pippin' because it was a kind of inspirational turning point in my life. But it was time to move on.

The hope is that in rediscovering 'Chicago,' audiences will rediscover what theater was. It was sophisticated, complicated, adult.

It's highly collaborative, musical theater, so everybody has got to somehow get along.

Creativity is not a mysterious thing, it's a historical thing.

I have a wonderful husband, sportswriter Peter Talbert.