I should not believein a God who does not dance.~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

 

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.

~ Angela Monet

 

 

There is nothing more notable in Socrates  than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.

~ Michel de Montaigne

Life's a dance you learn as you go.

~ John Michael Montgomery

 

 

Dancing is wonderful training for girls; it's the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it.~ Christopher Morley

 

 

I'm not interested in a group of people with some sort of incredible homogeny, a group that can do the movement I want.

I'm interested in people who can take the movement somewhere.~ Graeme Murphy

 

 

A cat is never a presentation, but an innocent happening.

~ Alwin Nikolais

 

 

Life is better with a little drama in it.

~ Scott Nilsson © 2000

 

 

I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might more wish to bethan a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art;finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his divine service.~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

 

Basic dance – and I should qualify the word basic - is primarily concerned with motion.

So immediately you will say but the basketball player is concerned with motion.

That is so – but he is not concerned with it primarily. His action is a means  towards an end beyond motion. In basic dance the motion is its own end – that is,

it is concerned with nothing beyond itself.

~ Alwin Nikolais

 

 

Dance - no translation needed.

~ Kristy Nilsson © 1999

 

 

Dance is the poetic baring of the soul through movement.

~ Scott Nilsson © 2001

 

 

It is not the movements that make a dance beautiful, it is the emotions that inspired the movements that make it beautiful.

~ Kristy Nilsson © 2002

 

      

 A pas de deux is a dialogue of love.

How can there be conversation if one partner is dumb?~ Rudolf Nureyev 

 

We danced with one body, one soul...  For me,

Margot is my family. She is all I have, only her.

~ Rudolf Nureyev on his partnership with Dame Margot Fonteyn

 

 

 

The easiest part should be the best part; don't ignore the little steps.

~ Kristy Nilsson © 2006

 

 

 

I will make an average man into an average dancer, provided he be passablywell made. I will teach him how to move his arms and legs, to turn his head.I will give him steadiness, brilliancy and speed;but I cannot endow him with that fire and intelligence,those graces and that expression of feeling which is the soul of true pantomime.~ Jean Georges Noverre

 

 

If I can not dance, I shall die!~ Anna Pavlova 

 

Master techniqueand then forget about it and be natural.~ Anna Pavlova

 

 

Musicality is when the dancers' movements appear to create the music - and not the other way around.

~ Kristy Nilsson © 2002

 

 

When the music and dance create with accord...their magic captivates both the heart and the mind.~ Jean Georges Noverre

 

 

It is a temptation to exploit one's technique because an audience is easily reached this way, but they cannot be moved by technique alone and to move an audience is the role of dance as an art.

~ Alla Ossipenko 

 

I danced from the moment I could stand.~ Anna Pavlova

 

No one can arrive from being talented alone.

God gives talent; work transforms talent into genius.

~ Anna Pavlova

 

 

My feet are dogs.~ Rudolf Nureyev 

 

Technique is what you fall back on when you run out of inspiration.~ Rudolf Nureyev 

 

 

Where there is no heartthere is no art.~ Anna Pavlova 

 

Hence it is from the representation of things spokenby means of posture and gesturethat the whole of the art of dance has been elaborated.~ Plato 

 

Learning ballet is wonderful for children even if they never become dancers.

It is wonderful because it teaches discipline, grace, and manners.

~ Anna Paskevska

 

 

To dance is to give oneself up to the rhythms of all life.~ Dr. Maya V. Patel 

 

Classical ballet is so unforgiving.~ Francis Patrellel

 

 

 

To sing well and to danceis to be well educated.~ Plato

 

 

I told you to sell it, not give it away.~ Jerome Robbins 

 

 

It's the easiest things that cause the most problems.~ Monet Robier 

 

The people who do not dance are dead.~ Jerry Rose of Dance Caravan 

 

I was a ballerina.I had to quit after I injured a groin muscle.It wasn't mine.~ Rita Rudner 

     

Whosoever knoweth the power of the dance, dwelleth in God.~ Rumi  

 

The dance is the mother of the arts.Music and poetry exist in time;painting and architecture in space.But the dance lives at once in time and space.~ Curt Sachs 

 

But in reality we are accompanied by the whole dancing universe.~ Ruth St. Denis 

 

I have performed for thousandswhen they found me exotic, the vogue, daring,but I have danced, at any given time, for about ten people...They were the ones that left the theater forever differentfrom the way they were when they came in.All of my long, long life, I have danced for those ten.~ Ruth St. Denis 

 

I see dance being used as communicationbetween body and soul,to express what it too deep, too fine for words.~ Ruth St. Denis 

 

It is not a question of who dances but of who or what does not dance.~ Ruth St. Denis 

 

Either you do the pirouette or you shoot yourself.One or the other, but something must happen.~ Monet Robier

 

 

You and I are but specks of that rhythmic urge which is Brahma, which is Allah, which is God.~ Ruth St. Denis 

 

Talk about dance?  Dance is not something to talk about.  Dance is to dance.~ Peter Saint James 

 

A teacher must possess many qualities –firmness and softness, patience and perseverance and sturdiness…But above all is love for children,desire to train them up, all of them, both week and strong.And, creativity in one's approach to one's task is also above all…~  Lyudmila Sakharova 

 

To those of us with real understanding, dancing is the only pure art form.~ Charles Schulz as Snoopy, Peanuts 

 

To live is to dance, to dance is to live.~ Charles Schulz as Snoopy, Peanuts 

 

To dance is to share – to share is to teach.

~ Selayma

 

All the gestures of children are graceful; the reign of distortion and unnatural attitudes commences with the introduction of the dancing master.~ Sir Joshua Reynolds 

 

My hope is to shed light, provoke thought, entertain, and move through dance.

~ Dwight Rhoden

 

 

Dance is like life, it exists as you're flitting through it,and when it's over, it's done.~ Jerome Robbins 

  

And men must walk at least before they dance.~ Alexander Pope

 

Ballet technique is arbitrary and very difficult.
It never becomes easy... it becomes possible.
~ Agnes de Mille
 

 

But remember that intent is everything.
One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises.
In the same way the lifted leg of an arabesque becomes a wing,
and not a mechanical leverage like a raised trap door.
This is the precise difference between dancing and acrobatics.
The dancer tries to express something;
the acrobat merely pulls, raises, stretches and grinds.
The acrobat is lost in a web of muscles;
the dancer is all but invisible in projected idea.
~ Agnes de Mille

 

 

Modern dancers
give a sinister portent about our times.
~ Agnes de Mille
 

 

The artist never entirely knows. We guess.

We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
~ Agnes de Mille
 

 

The effort involved in making a dancer's body
is so long and relentless, in many instances painful,
the effort to maintain the technique so grueling
that unless a certain satisfaction is derived
from the disciplining and the punishing,
the pace could not be maintained.
~ Agnes de Mille

 

 

The practice mirror is to be used
for the correction of faults,
not for a love affair,
and the figure you watch
should not become your dearest friend.
~ Agnes de Mille

 

 

The truest expression of a people
is in its dance and in its music.
Bodies never lie.
~ Agnes de Mille
 

 

The universe lies before you on the floor, in the air,
in the mysterious bodies of your dancers, in your mind.
From this voyage no one returns poor or weary.
~ Agnes de Mille
 

 

When you perform you are out of your self -
larger and more potent, more beautiful.
You are for minutes heroic.
This is power. This is is glory on earth.
And it is yours for the taking.
~ Agnes de Mille
 

 

Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter,
second only to screaming.
~ Agnes de Mille
 

 

When I dance I am really meditating
rather then performing for an audience.
I am completely absorbed by the music
and the steps I choose to respond to the music.
~ Agnes de Mille

 

      Top of Page!

Ballet is the one form of theater where nobody speaks a foolish word all evening - nobody on the stage at least.
   ~ Edwin Denby
 

 

There is a bit of insanity in dancing
that does everybody a great deal of good.
   ~ Edwin Denby
 

 

You don't have to know about ballet to enjoy it,
all you have to do is look at it.
   ~ Edwin Denby
 

 

Discourse on virtue and they pass by in droves.

Whistle and dance the shimmy, and you've got an audience.

~ Diogenes
 

 

 

Dancing: the highest intelligence in the freest body.
~ Isadora Duncan

 

 

I am seeking that dance which might be the
divine expression of the human spirit
through the medium of the body's movement.
~ Isadora Duncan
 

It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence

~ Isadora Duncan
 

 

I intend to work for this dance of the future.

I do not know whether I have the necessary qualities;

I may have neither genius nor talent nor temperament.

But I know that I have a Will; and will and energy sometimes prove greater than either genius or talent or temperament.

~ Isadora Duncan
 

 

Let us first teach little children to breathe,
to vibrate, to feel, and to become one
with the general harmony and movement of nature.
Let us first produce a beautiful human being,
a dancing child.
~ Isadora Duncan

 

 

Man must speak, then sing, then dance. The speaking is the brain,
the thinking man. The singing is the emotion.
The dancing is the Dionysian ecstasy which carries away all.
~ Isadora Duncan

 

 

No, I can't explain the dance to you;
if I could tell you what it meant,
there would be no point in dancing it.
~ Isadora Duncan

 

 

Perhaps he was a bit different from other people,
but what really sympathetic person is not a little mad?
~ Isadora Duncan

 

 

The dancer's body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul.
~ Isadora Duncan

 

 

The real American type can never be a ballet dancer.
The legs are too long, the body too supple and the spirit too free
for this school of affected grace and toe walking.
~ Isadora Duncan

 

 

There are likewise three kinds of dancers: first, those who consider dancing
as a sort of gymnastic drill, made up of impersonal and graceful arabesques;
second, those who, by concentrating their minds, lead the body into the rhythm
of a desired emotion, expressing a remembered feeling or experience.
And finally, there are those who convert the body into a luminous fluidity,
surrendering it to the inspiration of the soul.
~ Isadora Duncan

 

 

I had certain physical limitations that made me change the choreography for myself or made me more interested in choreography only rather than dancing.

I have never been a person who wanted to just dance.

I have always been interested in developing for other people.
~ Katherine Dunham

 

 

If you dance, you dance because you have to. Every dancer hurts, you know.

~ Katherine Dunham

 

 

When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor.

It's to enjoy each step along the way.
~ Wayne Dyer
 

 

Dancers are the athletes of God.
~ Albert Einstein
 

 

 

Human beings, vegetables, or comic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player

~ Albert Einstein

 

 

We all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
~ Albert Einstein

 

 

There is only the dance.

~ T. S. Eliot

 

 

After the horse dance was over, it seemed that I was above the ground and did not touch it when I walked.
~ Black Elk

 

 

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving,
the most beautiful of the arts,
because it is not mere translation or abstraction from life;
it is life itself.
~ Henry Havelock Ellis
 

 

I describe things in terms of body movements.

I dance a bit to describe what sort of movement it ought to make, and that's a good way of talking to musicians. Particularly bass players.
~ Brian Eno

 

 

Dance is so important in the world.
It needs no language.
Our bodies speak a language of its own.
~ Ibrahim Farrah