Dance is the poetic baring of the soul through motion.

~ Scott Nilsson © 2001

 

Dance is an art that imprints on the soul. It is with you every moment;it expresses itself in everything you do.~ Shirley MacLaine  

 

Never give a sword to a man who can't dance.

~ Confucius

 

 

The dancer, or dancers, must transform the stage for the audienceas well as for themselves into an autonomous, complete, virtual realm,and all motions into a play of visible forces in unbroken, virtual time...Both space and time, as perceptible factors, disappear almost entirelyin the dance illusion.~ Susanne K. Langer

 

 

To dance is to challenge the body which is also the self.

To generate an action which has a force of its own and allow the movement to penetrate the inner sensibilities, or to calculate the action and try to tune out – this is difficult, perhaps impossible.

~ Katherine Litz

 Football isn't a contact sport; it's a collision sport.  Dancing is a contact sport.~ Vince Lombardi 

 

Dancers aren’t pompous; they’re too tired.

~ José Limón

 

 

Thousands of emotions well up inside me through out the day.

They are released when I dance.~ Abraham Lincoln 

 

Dancers work and live from the inside.They drive themselves constantly producing a glowthat lights not only themselves but audience after audience.~ Murray Louis 

 

Poetry is like dancing.Not all of us can be ballet dancers, but all of us dance.Everyone has a poet inside of him struggling to get out.~ Marks and Spencer

 

 

We ought to dance with rapture that we might be alive...and part of the living, incarnate cosmos.~ D. H. Lawrence

 

 

To touch, to move, to inspire.This is the true gift of dance.~ Aubrey Lynch 

 

When come the lights shining on you from above. You are a performer.You forget all you learned, the process of technique, the fear, the pain,you even forget who you are you become one with the music, the lights, indeed one with the dance.~ Shirley MacLaine  

 

Dancers are an admirable bunch of people.The way they work.  The stress is extraordinary.It's a difficult career.  I think it's hellish;the fact that they are over the hill as they're emotionally maturing.That calls for a terrific strength of character.~ Lady D. MacMillan 

 

Even the ears must dance.~ Natalia Makarova

 

 

When one lifts a ballerina,it is not her weight but her nature that causes the problem.~ Maris Liepa

 

Dancing should look easy; like an optical illusion.It should seem effortless.  When you do a difficult variation, the audience is aware that it is demanding and that you havethe power and strength to do it.  But in the end, when you take your bow, you should look as if you were saying, ‘Oh, it was nothing. I could do it again.’~ Bruce Marks

 

 

Wives are people who feel they don't dance enough.

~ Groucho Marx

 

 

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon.~ Edward Lear

 

 

Scientists are complaining that the new dinosaur movie shows dinosaurs with lemurs, who didn't evolve for another million years.

They're afraid the movie will give kids a mistaken impression.

What about the fact that the dinosaurs are singing and dancing?

~  Jay Leno

     

  

The Marquesan girls dance all over;not only do their feet dance,but their arms, hands, fingers, ay,their very eyes seem to dance in their heads.~ Herman Melville

 

 

 Technique – bodily control – must be masteredonly because the body must not stand in the way of the soul's expression.~ La Meri

 

 

Bleeding feet will bond us.~ Liza Minelli

 

 

 All the ills of mankind,All the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books,All the political blunders,All the failures of the great leaders,Have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.~ from a Molière play

 

 

He [Gene Kelly] once told me dancing was a man's game,as much of a sport as baseball itself. And he made us believe that.He changed our minds and suddenly,all of America wanted to dance just like Gene Kelly.~ Liza Minnelli 

 

Come & trip it as ye go

On the light fantastic toe.~ John Milton 

 

It's the emotional trigger points that are important to me because I know if I could believe in the characters and try and imagine how they felt then I'd be able to do something quite honest.~ Graeme Murphy

 

 

 

Some are less giving, others are more reticent and you actually have to create for them.

Others have within them the next step.~ Graeme Murphy

 

 

We were tap-dancers but we put more style into it, more bodywork, instead of just footwork.~ Harold Nicholas

 

 

We should consider every day lostduring which we have not danced at least once.~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche  

 

Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education:

dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I addthat one must also be able to dance with the pen?~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 

It may be possible to do without dancing entirely.

Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind; but when a beginning is made – when the felicities of rapid motion have been once, though slightly felt – it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.
~ Jane Austen, "Emma"

 

 

 A dance is a measured pace,
as a verse is a measured speech.
~ Sir Francis Bacon

 

 

A violinist had a violin, a painter his palette.
All I had was myself.
I was the instrument that I must care for.
~ Josephine Baker

 

 

You haven't got anything to dance about
until you're over thirty-five anyway.
~ Bert Balladine

 

 

Ballet dancing is arduous, strenuous activity.
Students are engaged in physical training that rivals the training Olympic athletes undergo.
At the same time, they strive for physical perfection not for the prowess alone
but as a way of achieving the means necessary to express the pure nature of their art.
~ George Balanchine
 

 

Ballet is important and significant – yes. But first of all, it is a pleasure.

~ George Balanchine
 

 

(Choreography) is simpler than you think.

Just go and do, and don't think so much about it.

Just make something interesting.

~ George Balanchine
 

 

Dance is music made visible.
~ George Balanchine
 

 

Dancers are instruments,
like a piano the choreographer plays.
~ George Balanchine

 

There are short cuts to happiness,
and dancing is one of them.
~ Vicki Baum

 

 

Dance first. Think later.
It's the natural order.
~ Samuel Beckett

 

 

There are two ways of being creative.

One can sing and dance.

 Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers flourish.

~ Warren G. Bennis

 

 

Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.
~ Warren G. Bennis

 

 

There are those who dance to the rhythm that is played to them, those who only dance to their own rhythm, and those who don't dance at all.

~ José Bergamín

 

 

Let's face the music and dance.

~ Irving Berlin

 

 

A silent figure is the dancer, true but still, words become dance, and all things there express'd.

~ André Bjerke

 

 

A correct execution of an adagio
is the ne plus ultra of our art;
and I look on it as the touchstone of the dancer.
~ Carlo Blasis
 

 

 

Let us keep the dance of rain our fathers kept and tread our dreams beneath the jungle sky.
~ Arna Bontemps

 

 

 

It's not magic! It's physics.

The speed of the turn is what keeps you upright.
~ Deborah Bull
 

     

You can't reduce lactic acid, but you can increase your tolerance to it.

I do this through running or cycling, but it's a good idea

to match your training bout to the type of dance you do.
~ Deborah Bull

 

 

Young dancers are training at a very vulnerable time in their lives... So train the whole person, not just the dancer.
~ Deborah Bull

 

 

In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.
~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

 

 

 Our profession creates illusions.

It is not a matter of having a perfect body, but of dancing in such a way as to look perfect.

~ Wilheim Burmann

 

 

On with the dance!  Let joy be unconfined.
~ Lord George Gordon Byron

 

 

 

Dance then wherever you may be,

I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,

And I'll lead you all.

~ Sydney Carter

 

 

Classical dancing is like being a mother:
if you've never done it,
you can't imagine how hard it is.
~ Harriet Cavalli

 

 

One may judge a king
by the state of dancing during his reign.
~ Chinese proverb

  

 

Dancing is at once rational and healthful:
it gives animal spirits;
it is the natural amusement of young people,
and such it has been from the days of Moses.
~ William Cobbett
 

 

We have no adequate conception
of the perfection of the ancient tragic dance.
The pleasure which the Greeks received from it
had for its basis difference; and the more unfit the vehicle,
the more lively was the curiosity & intense the delights
at seeing the difficulty overcome.
~ S. T. Coleridge
 

 

How inimitably graceful children are in general –
before they learn to dance.
~ S. T. Coleridge

 

 

The dance is the mother of all languages.
~ R. G. Collingwood
  

 

Dancing is like dreaming with your feet!
~ Constanze
 

 

Dancers dance through their pain.

I shrink from mine.

~ Mason Cooley

 

 

Ballet is only good when it is great.

~ Arlene Croce

 

 

Good choreography fuses eye, ear and mind.
~ Arlene Croce

 

 

If Balanchine had any secret, it was one that has endured through two hundred years of classical ballet.

It is that dancing correctly in three dimensions, on the music, creates the fourth dimension of meaning.

~ Arlene Croce

 

 

It is through strength of technique that the body stays in possession of music.

~ Arlene Croce, on Balanchine’s philosophy

 

 

1. Beginning Dancer: knows nothing.
2. Intermediate Dancer: knows everything; too good to dance with beginners.
3. Hotshot Dancer: too good to dance with anyone.
4. Advanced Dancer: dances everything, especially with beginners.
~ Dick Crum
 

 

An art process in not essentially a natural process; it is an invented one.
It can take actions of organization from the way nature functions,
but essentially man invents the process. And from or for that process
he derives a discipline to make and keep the process functioning.
That discipline too is not a natural process. The daily discipline,
the continued keeping of the elasticity of the muscles,
the continued control of the mind over the body’s actions,
the constant hoped-for flow of the spirit into physical movement,
both new and renewed, is not a natural way.
It is unnatural in its demands on all the sources of energy.
But the final synthesis can be a natural one, natural in the sense that
the mind, body and spirit function as one.
~ Merce Cunningham
 

 

The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion,
the steadfast and willing devotion to the labor
that makes the class work not a gymnastic hour and a half,
or at the lowest level, a daily drudgery,
 but a devotion that allows the classroom discipline
to become moments of dancing too...
~ Merce Cunningham

 

 

The only way to do it is to do it.
~ Merce Cunningham
 

 

Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing.
It's the rhythm of your life.
It’s the expression in time and movement,
in happiness, joy, sadness and envy.
~ Jacques d'Amboise
 

Enjoy the process of learning to dance.
The process of our profession,
and not its final achievement,
is the heart and soul of dance.
~ Jacques d'Amboise
 

 

 

You can't see a painter or a writer or a musician if you just look at them,
but you can see a dancer in a child if they've studied ballet for a year.
~ The Dancer and the Dance (film)
 

 

It's not just for its influence on us, but to know that we can play a part in it, to understand the influence that we have outside our own existence.
~ Siobhan Davies

 

 

The dance world is too small in lots of ways -  it's too intense, it rattles around itself, and it needs exposing to other ideas.
~ Siobhan Davies

 

 

Tap dancing all started with the old clog waltz.

~ Sammy Davis, Jr.