/* 2Nilssons.com Dance Quote-of-the-Day (c) 2006 Scott and Kristy Nilsson */ /* If you harvest our Dance Quotes for your own page, please credit 2nilssons.com */ /* Our complete collection is online at http://2nilssons.com/dancequotes.htm */ /* Email addresses snk - at - 2nilssons.com or snknilsson - at - gmailcom */ /* This Javascript was modified from code courtesy of Ralph Capper. */ /* If you borrow this code, please credit and thank him. Thank you, Ralph! */ /* His site is at ralpharama.com, email: ralph - at - ralpharama.co.uk */ /* All Quotes are simply held in an array as follows */ quotes=new Array( "Humans are measured not through their words but their deeds. The abstraction of deeds is dance itself. ~ from flyer for Chinvat, the Ninth Bridge", "In life as in dance: Grace glides on blistered feet. ~ Alice Abrams", "Beside the fire, as the wood burn black,a laughing dancer in veils of light, whose dance transforms the darkness to gold. ~ Adu Abd Allan ben Abi-l-Khisal ben Abi-l-Khisal", "He who cannot dance will say: The drum is bad. ~ African Proverb", "If you can talk, you can sing. If you can walk, you can dance! ~ African Proverb", "The mother of the dance is the melody because she gives you everything, tells you everything you need to know, like a mother. The father of the dance is the rhythm and he is the strong one, the leader, the authority - as a father should be! ~ Tayyar Akdeniz", "Dance is for everybody. I believe that the dance came from the people and that it should always be delivered back to the people. ~ Alvin Ailey", "There is such a difference when you're dancing to music you really love, when there is this meeting of music and dancer that fuses into one. Those are the experiences we live for. ~ Aisha Ali", "They follow me and I never know what I'm going to do. I lead them through a variety of dance experiences, and at these times, I'm no longer myself. I'm like a go-between. When I hear certain pieces of music, I project myself into the place and time where I saw a particular dancer. Then I become that performer.! ~ Aisha Ali", "A dancer should learn from all the arts. Go to museums and look at the paintings. See how they balance things. Everything you do in the arts enriches you. ~ Alicia Alonso", "This new form of dialogue that is bringing us to the art to which I have dedicated my life, is rooted in the deepest and most beautiful part of being human. ~ Alicia Alonso", "When you are ecstatic and in love, you feel buoyant, you feel life, you feel like you're dancing in the sky. ~ Margo Anand", "It’s true of all great artists that the more you see, the more you want to see. ~ Peter Anastos, choreographer", "Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances. ~ Maya Angelou", "Dance is a life, everyday. don't miss it. You're in bodies, you can move... Where is your joy! ~ Mary Anthony", "Dance is a sort of silent rhetoric. ~ Canon Thoinot Arbeau", "The dance, just as the performance of the actor, is kinesthetic art, art of the muscle sense. The awareness of tension and relaxation within his own body, the sense of balance that distinguishes the proud stability of the vertical from the risky adventures of thrusting and falling – these are the tools of the dancer. ~ Rudolf Arnheim", "The choreographer cannot deliberately make a ballet to appeal to an audience, he has to start from personal inspirations. He has to trust the ballet, to let it stand on its own strengths or fall on its weaknesses. If it reaches the audience, then he is lucky that round! ~ Gerald Arpino", "Dancing allows me to explore myself in so many ways, to learn about my limitations and strengths, my ability to cope with adversity and to go farther than I thought I could. You find out what you're made of. ~ Andrew Asnes", "Dancing is a sweat job. ~ Fred Astaire", "Do it big, do it right, and do it with style. ~ Fred Astaire", "I have no desire to prove anything by dancing. I have never used it as an outlet or a means of expressing myself. ~ Fred Astaire", "If the dance is right, there shouldn't be a single superfluous movement. ~ Fred Astaire", "Slippery stages were the terror of my life. ~ Fred Astaire", "The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style. ~ Fred Astaire", "I'd rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown. ~ Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle", "Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape. ~ (Wystan Hugh) W. H. Auden", "Dance till the stars come down from the rafters. Dance, dance, dance – till you drop. ~ (Wystan Hugh) W. H. Auden", "All the dancer's gestures are signs of things, and the dance called rational, because it aptly signifies and displays something over and above the pleasure of the senses. ~ Saint Augustine", "I praise the dance, for it frees people from the heaviness of matter and binds the isolated to community. I praise the dance, which demands everything: health and a clear spirit and a buoyant soul. Dance is a transformation of space, of time, of people, who are in constant danger of becoming all brain, will, or feeling. Dancing demands a whole person, one who is firmly anchored in the center of his life, who is not obsessed by lust for people and things and the demon of isolation in his own ego. Dancing demands a freed person, one who vibrates with the equipoise of all his powers. I praise the dance. O man, learn to dance, or else the angels in heaven will not know what to do with you. ~ Saint Augustine", "(Dance is)...a whole system of concepts, images, words, and practices, some of them ritual ones. One cannot possibly understand a part of the whole, if isolated from the remaining parts of that whole... dancing makes sense along with music... along with the nostalgia evoked, memories from the past together with a given way of visualizing the world... ~ Maria Susana Azzi", "When you take dancing lessons, you learn steps and you learn steps and you learn steps. It can go on for a long time. And then one day, you just learn to dance, and it is so different. ~ Bill Austin", "Fine dancing, I believe like virtue, must be its own reward. Those who are standing by are usually thinking of something very different. ~ Jane Austen", "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", "A dance is a measured pace, as a verse is a measured speech. ~ Sir Francis Bacon", "The heart of the dance is the heart of the dancer. ~ Ghazallah al-Badriyyah", "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", "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", "First comes the sweat. Then comes the beauty if you're very lucky and have said your prayers. ~ George Balanchine", "God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it – from what I see, from what the dancers can do, from what others do... ~ George Balanchine", "I am a cloud – in trousers. ~ George Balanchine", "I could never make a ballet by wrinkling my brow and concentrating. If you set out deliberately to make a masterpiece, how will you ever get it finished! ~ George Balanchine", "I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance. ~ George Balanchine", "In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell ... we can't dance synonyms. ~ George Balanchine", "In my ballets, woman is first. Men are consorts. God made men to sing the praises of women. They are not equal to men: They are better. ~ George Balanchine", "It's like the time capsule with everything in it. Or like the seed that when you plant it, becomes the enormous tree with leaves and fruit. Everybody was in that little seed, and so everything can open. The tree of dance is like that. It just takes a long, long time to blossom. ~ George Balanchine", "Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned. ~ George Balanchine", "My muse must come to me on union time. ~ George Balanchine", "One is born to be a dancer. No teacher can work miracles, nor will years of training make a good dancer of an untalented pupil. One may be able to acquire a certain technical facility, but no one can ever acquire an exceptional talent.' I have never prided myself on having an unusually gifted pupil. A Pavlova is no one's pupil but God's. ~ George Balanchine", "Put a man and a girl on stage and there is already a story; a man and two girls, there's already a plot. ~ George Balanchine", "Someone once said that dancers work just as hard as policeman, always alert, always tense, but see, policemen don't have to be beautiful at the same time. ~ George Balanchine", "The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener. ~ George Balanchine", "The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they reach the audience through the eye. It's the illusion created which convinces the audience, much as it is with the work of a magician! ~ George Balanchine", "The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself. ~ George Balanchine", "You haven't got anything to dance about until you're over thirty-five anyway. ~ Bert Balladine", "What do you dance! ~ Traditional African Bantu greeting to a member of another Bantu tribe", "Technique is what you need to do to dance well, principally to make it feel good to your partner. Style is everything else you do when you dance, hopefully to make it look good to your partner, and your audience. ~ David Barker", "Dance has become an exclusionary enterprise. To participate, one must be thinner than thin, of pleasing form, flexible, athletic and young. If you are not all these things, you will be allowed to dance in the privacy of your own living room. You just wouldn't dare to put yourself onstage. ~ Clive Barnes", "One of the few things in dance to match the Royal Ballet's curtain calls is the Royal Ballet's dancing. ~ Clive Barnes", "Every ballet, whether or not successful artistically or with the public, has given me something important. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "If your only dance experience is the Nutcracker, it will be a shock; hopefully shocking in a good way. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "It doesn't matter how high you lift your leg. The technique is about transparency, simplicity, making an earnest attempt. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "I like the most provocative and most surprising partnerships on stage. Intensity and surprise. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "I want to see people dance, and I would like to guess what kind of people they are. I don't want to know the recipe for their pasta. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "Just sit and open your eyes and open your heart. It's dance theater. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "The problem is not making up the steps but deciding which ones to keep. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "There comes a moment in a young artist's life when he knows he has to bring something to the stage from within himself. He has to put in something in order to be able to take something. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "To achieve some depth in your field requires a lot of sacrifices. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "We're trying to stretch our muscles creatively. It gives us so much more freedom. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "What brought me to the theater, no matter you're a Jew or a Russian or Armenian or Latvian, are suddenly illuminated by stage light and one beautiful image of dance. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "You can be totally involved, you could admire just the shape of or you could be totally emotionally mushed up into the dance. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals. ~ Mikhaïl Baryshnikov", "Even when she walks one would believe that she dances. ~ Charles Baudelaire", "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", "In the dance, one finds the cinema, the comic strips, the Olympic hundred meters and swimming, and what's more, poetry, love and tenderness. ~ Maurice Béjart", "The dance: a minimum of explanation, a minimum of anecdotes, and a maximum of sensations. ~ Maurice Béjart", "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", "God respects us when we work, but he loves us when we dance. ~ Les Blanc (also attributed as a Sufi saying)", "A correct execution of an adagio is the ne plus ultra of our art; and I look on it as the touch-stone of the dancer. ~ Carlo Blasis", "What is dance? I am dancing all the time. Every gesture, the body line of every pose, the way I get from place to place, the movement in the acting – none of it would be the way it is if I weren't a dancer. ~ Ray Bolger", "Nothing happens in the body without happening in the brain first... dancing is 95% mental. ~ Bobby Boling", "Let us keep the dance of rain our fathers kept and tread our dreams beneath the jungle sky. ~ Arna Bontemps", "Ballet is not technique but a way of expression that comes more closely to the inner language of man than any other. ~ George Borodin", "While I dance, I cannot judge, I cannot hate, I cannot separate myself from life. I can only be joyful and whole. That is why I dance. ~ Hans Bos", "All dance is about sensual expression. It is about energy and vitality, and it is one of the most liberating activities available to us. ~ Wendy Bounaventura", "I'm always very true to the music and I honour the music in the way I see it. ~ Matthew Bourne", "It is not so much upon the number of exercises, as the care with which they are done, that progress and skill depend. ~ August Bournonville", "The beauty to which the Dance ought to aspire is not dependent upon taste or pleasure, but is founded on the immutable laws of Nature. ~ August Bournonville", "Artists lead unglamorous daily lives of discipline and routine, but their work is full of passion. Each has a vision and feels responsibility to that vision. ~ Merryl Brockway", "Love is a lot like dancing; you just surrender to the music. ~ Pierce Brosnan", "I learned to act by watching Martha Graham dance, and I learned to dance by watching Charlie Chaplin act. ~ Louise Brooks", "Movement without meaning is just exercise. ~ Marie Brooks", "Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor. ~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.", "The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing. ~ James Brown", "I don’t want to feel a shoe; I want the shoe to become part of me. ~ Leslie Browne", "A child sings before it speaks, dances almost before it walks, music is with us from the beginning. ~ Pamela Brown", "Dance can give the inarticulate a voice. ~ Pamela Brown", "The human animal dances wildest on the edge of the grave. ~ Rita Mae Brown", "Dance every performance as if it were your last. ~ Erik Bruhn", "The call to dance is a response to a primitive urge to rhythmic motion. It is an unavoidable internal rhythm of life. ~ Dorothy Buck", "Body language is a very powerful tool... 80% of what you understand in a conversation is read through the body, not the words. ~ Deborah Bull", "I enjoy the freedom of modern dance as well as the constraints of classical dance. ~ Deborah Bull", "So if the dance is five minutes long, make yourself run for perhaps eight minutes. That way, you over-train and the dance will seem easier... ~ Deborah Bull", "I think it's useful to experience other types of dance and other cultures, and the life of a classical dancer these days is certainly not all tutus! So experience of other dance forms is a good idea. ~ Deborah Bull", "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", "Good art is a form of prayer. It's a way to say what is not sayable. ~ Frederich Busch", "It's very easy to become selfish and narrow-minded and see ballet as the only thing in life, but there's lots more. ~ Darcey Bussell", "You have to be able to cut off from the ballet and relax, or you have anxiety dreams at night, worrying about what you're going to dance the next day, going over every little detail. ~ Darcey Bussell", "On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined. ~ Lord George Gordon Byron", "Though I soon became typecast in Hollywood as a gangster and hoodlum, I was originally a dancer, an Irish hoofer, trained in vaudeville tap dance. I always leapt at the opportunity to dance in films later on. ~ James Cagney", "Kind are her answers, But her performance keeps no day; Breaks time, as dancers From their own Music when they stray. ~ Thomas Campion", "The further off from England the nearer is to France – Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance. ~ Lewis Carroll", "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", "You're not here by mistake. Someone at your audition watched you dance and saw something special. All you've gotta do is figure out how to find that again. ~ Center Stage", "To dance is to be out of yourself and in yourself at the same time. Those whom you encompass need only to look... because they are inside of you when you dance. ~ Eva Cernik", "I use dancing to embellish, extend or enlarge upon an existing emotion. ~ Gower Champion", "The really great dancer is perhaps a rarer phenomenon than great musicians, painters or sculptors. This is because dance is a consummation of all these arts. The dancer, in addition to the qualities that pure dance demands, must be sensitive to and have an uncanny ear for music, must have a painter’s sensibility to the significant line, a sculptor’s approach to form, an architect’s vision of space and a trained actor’s responses to dramatic situations. ~ K. Subhas Chandran", "If their feet aren't in the right place, at least their hearts are. ~ Christian M. Chensvold, on novices", "Until you're ready to look foolish, you'll never have the possibility of being great. ~ Cher", "One may judge a king by the state of dancing during his reign. ~ Chinese proverb", "Dance is movement, and movement is life. ~ Ludmilla Chiriaeff", "Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself believe. ~ Winston Churchill", "Hardly any man dances when sober, unless he is insane. Nor does he dance while alone, nor at a respectable and moderate party. Dancing is the final phase of a wild party with fancy decorations and a multitude of delights. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro Murena", "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", "As an American, the first thing I noticed about British dancers was their intellectual response to movement. In countries like Israel, the USA, Australia and South Africa, the approach is much more athletic. People spend a lot of time outdoors, and play sports in clothing that exposes the body. Northern Europeans tend to be more introverted – more covered up in every sense. ~ Robert Cohan", "Fantasy is a reality you can dance to. ~ Richard Cohen", "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", "To dance is to affirm. ~ Bayard Coll", "The dance is the mother of all languages. ~ R. G. Collingwood", "Never give a sword to a man who can't dance. ~ Confucius", "Dancing is like dreaming with your feet! ~ Constanze", "Do you love me – now that I can dance! ~ Pop song and lyric by The Contours", "It's that vision of freedom you create when you're defying physical law... ~ Bart Cook, NYCB", "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", "The most important thing about folk dance in its original setting is that it gives the dancer an opportunity to express both the identity with a society and the dancer's place within that society. ~ Dick Crum", "Instead of seeing the rug being pulled from under us, we can learn to dance on a shifting carpet. ~ Thomas Crum", "i'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. ~ (edward estlin) e. e. cummings", "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", "A dance legacy must be performed in order to be preserved! ~ Ann Daly", "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", "Because ballet can seem remote onstage – glittering, exquisite, perfect and not quite real – Anne Belle puts her viewers in the studio and backstage to see the exacting physical and mental demands of the art, the sweat and the grueling repetition. Once brought down to earth, ballet becomes something we can all relate to: a tension-fraught and inspiring human quest to conquer the impossible. ~ Dance Magazine", "... The dancer not be separated from the dance, she also cannot be separated from the history of dancing, from the line of dancers and teachers leading to her. ~ The Dancer and the Dance (film)", "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", "To understand the culture, study the dance. To understand the dance, study the people. ~ Chuck Davis", "Tap dancing all started with the old clog waltz. ~ Sammy Davis, Jr.", "Dance – an art form. The body – an instrument. Learn to play the instrument and master the art form. ~ Debbie Dee", "The Dance instills in you something that sets you apart. Something heroic and remote. ~ Edgar Degas", "Locked in this dance is a secret language that tells the story of women's lives... their passions and their spirituality, their sacrifices, their joys, their intuitions, their emotional life drama. ~ Delilah", "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", "Dance constitutes a true recapturing of... freedom and childish play. ~ Agnes de Mille", "Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion. ~ 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", "All Ballets' fundamental steps are derived from the folk dances of Western Europe. ~ Dame Ninette de Valois", "Diaghilev was the first to notice good character dancers and that sort of thing. ~ Dame Ninette de Valois", "First of all, the most important, that is to learn everything good that has survived from other times, and carefully to watch the bad – and throw it out. ~ Dame Ninette de Valois", "Nothing is done easily, first have the thing, then the thing has a success, then all sorts of difficulties arise through the success. ~ Dame Ninette de Valois", "We are developing the other parts, and we can't give quite all our attention to the upper part, but soon the lower parts will be developed, and the upper part and the lower part will become partners, that will be wonderful. ~ Dame Ninette de Valois", "You can't dance until you've learnt steps, the things your feet can do. ~ Dame Ninette de Valois", "You never advance without losing something en passant... you lose it because you're paying so much attention to the new thing. ~ Dame Ninette de Valois", "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", "When you fall, try it again... everyone falls the first time! ~ Dave Dodson", "Dancing is the poetry of the foot. ~ John Dryden", "Dancing is the last word in life. In dancing, one draws nearer to oneself. ~ Jean Dubuffet", "A dancer, if she is great, can give to the people something that they can carry with them forever. They can never forget it, and it has changed them, though they may never know it. ~ Isadora Duncan", "Dancing: the highest intelligence in the freest body. ~ Isadora Duncan", "Every movement that can be danced on the seashore without being in harmony with the rhythm of the waves, every movement that can be danced in the forest without being in harmony with the swaying of the branches, every movement that one can dance... in the sunshine, in the open country, without being in harmony with the life and the solitude of the landscape – every such movement is false, in that it is out of tune in the midst of nature's harmonious lines. That is why the dancer should above all else choose movements that express the strength, health, nobility, ease and serenity of living things. ~ 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", "I have discovered the dance. I have discovered the art which has been lost for two thousand years. ~ 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", "If we seek the real source of the dance, if we go to nature, we find that the dance of the future is the dance of the past, the dance of eternity, and has been and always will be the same... The movement of waves, of winds, of the earth is ever the same lasting harmony. ~ 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", "It is the mission of all art to express the highest and most beautiful ideals of man. ~ 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", "My art is just an effort to express the truth of my being in gesture and movement. It has taken me long years to find even one absolutely true movement. ~ 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 Dance – it is the rhythm of all that dies in order to live again; it is the eternal rising of the sun. ~ Isadora Duncan", "The dancer of the future will be one whose body & soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of the soul will have become the movement of the body. ~ Isadora Duncan", "The dancer's body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul. The true dance is an expression of serenity; it is controlled by the profound rhythm of inner emotion. Emotion does not reach the moment of frenzy out of a spurt of action; it broods first, it sleeps like the life in the seed, and it unfolds with a gentle slowness. The Greeks understood the continuing beauty of a movement that mounted, that spread, that ended with a promise of rebirth. ~ Isadora Duncan", "The only dance masters I could have were Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Walt Whitman and Nietzsche. ~ 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", "To dance is to live. What I want is a school of life. ~ Isadora Duncan", "To express what is the most moral, healthful and beautiful in art this is the mission of the dancer, and to this I dedicate my life. ~ Isadora Duncan", "When I was sixteen, I danced before an audience without music. At the end someone suddenly cried 'its Death and the Maiden'. But that was not my intention; I was only endeavoring to express my first knowledge of the underlying tragedy in all seemingly joyous manifestation. The dance according with my comprehension, should have been called 'Life and the Maiden'. ~ Isadora Duncan", "Isadora [Duncan], by simplifying the dance, by cutting away all extraneous matters, such as technical virtuosity for its own sake, and the like, was able to focus our attention on the meaning of each work and the grace and appropriateness of the movements used to express that meaning. ~ Isadora Duncan biographer Frederika Blair", "We had never imagined that what is deepest and most active in the life of the mind could be expressed by the hands, the fingers, the soles of the feet - not merely the face. ~ The Russian magazine Iskusstvo, 1905, in reference to Isadora Duncan", "Life isn't choreographed. That's why I fall down a lot. ~ Sacha 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", "I can do my dance, and I can feel one thing, and the audience member can see it and feel another, and there's nothing wrong... It gives everybody a lot of room. ~ Douglas Dunn", "Art always unites people - their hearts and nations around the world. ~ Kizlarkhon Dustmuhamedova", "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", "To everything there is a season... a time to dance... ~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-8", "Dancers are the athletes of God. ~ Albert Einstein", "Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player. ~ 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 very important to people who play music with a beat. I think that people who don't dance, or who never did dance, don't really understand the beat... I know musicians who don't and never did dance, and they have difficulty communicating. ~ Duke Ellington, The World of Duke Ellington", "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", "Lose yourself in the music, the moment - you own it. ~ Eminem", "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", "Many a maiden, With white feet dancing light as air, Made happy music through the gloom. ~ Euripides (The Trojan Women)", "To dance, put your hand on your heart and listen to the sound of your soul. ~ Eugene Louis (Luigi) Faccuito", "Dance is so important in the world. It needs no language. Our bodies speak a language of its own. ~ Robert (Bobby) Ibrahim Farrah", "This point of being a mature artist (is) where realism replaces fantasy, where hopes never diminish, where the love of art is more passionate than ever. And yet that which we love has brought us a lot of suffering, because the life of an artist is often uncompromising at times. It’s brought us a lot of pain, a lot of angst. And yet no matter what it’s brought, the love of your craft will overpower it all. (Because when) you see life, you see dance. You see feeling. We change the meaning of the words of our vocabulary with age. ~ Robert (Bobby) Ibrahim Farrah", "You know when you are an artist when you evoke an emotional response – whether its love or hate. It's when you evoke no response that you have to worry. ~ Robert (Bobby) Ibrahim Farrah", "After I stopped dancing, I was unable to listen to beautiful music. ~ Suzanne Farrell", "Although we do come from a silent profession, it is important for us to verbalize what we want to say. (As I tell my students): you could love someone all your life, but if you never say it how are they going to know? There comes a point when you have to say what you mean, which makes you scream louder when you dance. ~ Suzanne Farrell", "As soon as I hear music, something in me starts to vibrate. ~ Suzanne Farrell", "Dancers are a great breed of people. And they really want to dance so you don't have to beg them to work. However, dancers sometimes build walls around themselves because they are presenting themselves all the time: dancing is very much a confession. ~ Suzanne Farrell", "Fifth positions, heads, musicality, energy. Not technical things so much-getting your leg higher or doing more turns but things that would set you apart from other dancers. The only way you can be different is to be yourself If you don't find your spirit and reveal it, you just look like every other dancer. ~ Suzanne Farrell", "Even though I am a professional, and I know what the steps are, I don't quite know how I'm going to do them, because I haven't lived that moment yet. I always feel very insecure and I get very excited. ~ Suzanne Farrell", "I think it was important that I learned to love to dance eventually for its own sake, as opposed to wanting to be a ballerina. ~ Suzanne Farrell", "I was very happy that I was as normal as possible before I went into serious dance. ~ Suzanne Farrell", "It's a wonderful thing to be able to dance, tell your body what you want it to do. ~ Suzanne Farrell", "Plié is the first thing you learn and the last thing you master. ~ Suzanne Farrell", "My friends and I had taken dancing lessons, although none of us would ever admit it. In those depression days, a friend of my mother was trying to make a living by teaching dancing in the evening, in an upstairs dance studio. There was a back door to the place, and she arranged it so the young men could come up through the back way without being seen. ~ Richard Feynman", "Inspiration is always within reach. It is life's way of reaching out and inviting you to dance. ~ Flavia", "It takes an athlete to dance, but an artist to be a dancer. ~ Shanna La Fleur", "Dancing was something to be taken very seriously when engaged in and otherwise put out of mind. ~ Dame Margot Fonteyn", "Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable. ~ Dame Margot Fonteyn", "Great artists are people who find ways to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike. ~ Dame Margot Fonteyn", "I explained it when I danced it. ~ Dame Margot Fonteyn", "Minor things can become moments of great revelation when encountered for the first time! ~ Dame Margot Fonteyn", "The one important thing I have learnt over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking oneself seriously. The first is imperative and the second disastrous. ~ Dame Margot Fonteyn", "The mechanics of épaulement are what gives ballet its inner transitions. ~ William Forsythe", "I think Balanchine and Robbins talk to God and when I call, he's out to lunch. ~ Bob Fosse", "Human beings are born with the instinct to express themselves through movement. Even before he could communicate with words, primitive man was dancing to the beat of his own heart. ~ Bob Fosse", "We dance round in a ring and suppose. ~ Robert Frost", "All dance has expression. If there is no expression, I prefer the circus. The performers do more dangerous, more difficult technical things than we do. But we are dancers. We have to express and we have to project. ~ Luis Fuente", "Live a balanced life – learn some and think some, and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. ~ Robert Fulghum", "There are three steps you have to complete to become a professional dancer: learn to dance, learn to perform and learn how to cope with injuries. ~ D. Gere", "She danced the dance of flames and fire, and the dance of swords and spears; she danced the dance of stars and the dance of space, and then she danced the dance of flowers in the wind. ~ Khalil Gibran, “The Wanderer”", "They're not particular about whether you're playing a flatted fifth  or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it. ~ Dizzy Gillespie", "Poise is the finest point of balance it is possible to attain, both mentally and physically. The various parts of the physique having been adjusted truly to the centre of gravity, poise lifts the whole being to a point so delicate that it almost defies definition... Poise, the great law of equilibrium, is that second in infinity when action ceases and there is rest. ~ Ruby Ginner", "The actor should know how to use his body, and have every part of it  completely under his command, that he may use the whole of himself to interpret any character in its own rhythm. Conversely the dancer should study emotion and character in order that his every movement may have meaning. ~ Ruby Ginner", "... the ultimate aim of all dance must be to move the whole being together in harmony. Therefore, having made the body sensitive, let it be swept by rhythm: the rhythm of music, by moving to a good swinging simple tune; the rhythm of nature,  by floating in the sea, and surrendering to the will of the waves; or by lying on the branches of a tree in the wind to feel its effortless swaying. In this way the outer and the inner being will be harmonised... ~ Ruby Ginner", "To dance without the help of any other art, to express, not another's thought or rhythm, but the vision of the artist's own spirit, that is the highest form of dance. The most exquisite expressions are those when the spirit only makes the song, and the dancer moves in a beauty of silence akin to the silence of the stars. ~ Ruby Ginner", "I believe education in music, theater, dance, and the visual arts... is part of a well-rounded education and can provide so much joy, now and in the future. ~ Rudolph Giuliani", "Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe", "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution. ~ Emma Goldman", "Samuel Goldwyn: What kind of dancing does Martha Graham do? His assistant: Modern dancing. Samuel Goldwyn: I don't want her then; modern dancing is so old fashioned.", "Birthing my baby boy was the essence of a contact dance. For me, the key to a satisfying improvisational dance means abandoning my analytical mind and embracing the center of my intuitive self... I danced my baby out into this world, and he danced with me. Now, when we hold each other and move together through our days and nights I feel the continuation of our original improv on the day he was born. ~ Lisa Gottlieb-Clark", "A building – if it's beautiful – is the love of one man, he's made it out of his love for space, materials, things like that. ~ Martha Graham", "A dancer, more than any other human being, dies two deaths: the first, the physical when the powerfully trained body will no longer respond as you would wish. After all, I choreographed for myself. I never choreographed what I could not do. I changed steps in Medea and other ballets to accommodate the change. But I knew. And it haunted me. I only wanted to dance. ~ Martha Graham", "A dancer must listen to his body and pay homage to it. Behind the movement lies this terrible, driving passion, this necessity. I won't settle for anything less. ~ Martha Graham", "Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain. ~ Martha Graham", "Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully, and with inevitability. ~ Martha Graham", "Dance is the hidden language of the soul. ~ Martha Graham", "Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing. ~ Martha Graham", "Dancing appears glamorous, easy, delightful. But the path to paradise of the achievement is not easier than any other. There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep. There are times of complete frustration, there are daily small deaths. ~ Martha Graham", "Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery. ~ Martha Graham", "Every dance is kind of a fever chart, a graph of the heart. ~ Martha Graham", "Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men. ~ Martha Graham", "First we have to believe, and then we believe. ~ Martha Graham", "Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for – liberation. ~ Martha Graham", "Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion. ~ Martha Graham", "I did not want to be a tree, a flower or a wave. In a dancer's body, we as audience must see ourselves, not the imitated behavior of everyday actions,  not the phenomenon of nature, not exotic creatures from another planet, but something of the miracle that is a human being. ~ Martha Graham", "It is difficult to see the great dance effects as they happen, to see them accurately, catch them fast in memory. It is even more difficult to verbalize them for critical discussion. The particular essence of a performance, its human sweep of articulate rhythm in space and in time has no specific terminology to describe it by. ~ Martha Graham", "It's what I always wanted to do: to show the laughter, the fun – the joy of dance. ~ Martha Graham", "It takes ten years, usually, to make a dancer. It takes ten years of handling the instrument, handling the material with which you are dealing, for you to know it completely. ~ Martha Graham", "Learn by practice. ~ Martha Graham", "Movement never lies: it is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it. ~ Martha Graham", "My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement. ~ Martha Graham", "No artist is ahead of his time. He is time; the others are just behind the times. ~ Martha Graham", "Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are not great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion. ~ Martha Graham", "Nothing is more revealing than movement. ~ Martha Graham", "Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired. ~ Martha Graham", "Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can. ~ Martha Graham", "The body is a sacred garment. ~ Martha Graham", "Theater is a verb before it is a noun... ~ Martha Graham", "The next time you look into the mirror, just look at the way the ears rest next to the head; look at the way the hairline grows; think of all the little bones in your wrist. It is a miracle. And the dance is a celebration of that miracle. ~ Martha Graham", "The spine is the tree of life.  Respect it. ~ Martha Graham", "The world I'm interested in is the one where things are not named. ~ Martha Graham", "There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. ~ Martha Graham", "Think of the magic of that foot... upon which your whole weight rests. It’s a miracle and the dance...is a celebration of that miracle. ~ Martha Graham", "To learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. ~ Martha Graham", "To me, this acquirement of nervous, physical, and emotional concentration is the one element possessed to the highest degree by the truly great dancers of the world. Its acquirement is the result of discipline, of energy in the deep sense. That is why there are so few great dancers. ~ Martha Graham", "We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God. ~ Martha Graham", "We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance. ~ Martha Graham", "Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground. ~ Martha Graham", "You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled, then something has been lost. ~ Martha Graham", "You see, when weaving a blanket, an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out. ~ Martha Graham", "May our dance always be a bridge to understanding. May our dance always be a celebration of diversity. May our dance always be an instrument for peace. ~ Laurel Victoria Gray", "The Gypsy Dancer appears to be free from the societal constraints. The Gypsy as the Wild Woman archetype has magical powers, powers which make her dangerous. She is out-of-control, or at least beyond the control of the patriarchy. She evokes fear, especially in the subconscious where the Wild Woman lurks within us all. We are afraid to let her out because we may loose control. ~ Laurel Victoria Gray", "If life is a dance, then friends are the music. ~ Eva Gregory", "I just know that when I go on stage, I give everything I have, not only my legs, not only my feet, not only my body. I try to tell a story. Sometimes I'm able to cry because I feel like it. Sometimes I'm able to love because I feel like it. ~ Sylvie Guillem", "Technical perfection is insufficient. It is an orphan without the true soul of the dancer. ~ Sylvie Guillem", "The more you understand the music, the easier you can dance. ~ Orlando Gutinez", "Don't carry a grudge. While you're carrying the grudge, the other guy's out dancing. ~ Buddy Hackett", "I imagine a future where many of us will call ourselves dancers and collaborate to make an art which concerns itself with primary areas of life... for me, peace is a communal work process, a collective vision. The dance itself tries to exemplify a few of these methods in a truly grounded and practical way so that the people can say: yes, there are prospects of survival. ~ Anna Halprin", "I’m very excited about dance and love it with a deep passion. I also struggle, tire and become discouraged. But what has always revived me... has been the rebirth of energy each time the creative process is awakened and artistic activity begins to unfold – even in some infinitesimal measure. ~ Anna Halprin", "Just as the ancients danced to call upon the spirits in nature, we too can dance to find the spirits within ourselves that have been long buried and forgotten. ~ Anna Halprin", "It is the process of regularly engaging in meaningful activity [class] that is truly rewarding to the dancer, not just the school recital or getting a glowing review in the New York Times.  This intrinsic enjoyment is based on physical mastery, with little or no separation between who you are as a person and your ability to perform. ~ Linda H. Hamilton", "To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other. ~ Jack Handey", "Contrary to conventional wisdom, dance is not a universal “language’ but many languages and dialects. There are close to 6000 verbal languages, and probably that many dance languages. ~ Judith Lynne Hanna", "The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word. ~ Mata Hari", "So many dancers rely on some sort of magic happening on the stage. They never, for various reasons, work full out in rehearsal. That’s very uncreative. They don’t discover the kinds of things that add up to a remarkable performance. ~ Benjamin Harkarvy", "It is more important who they are as people and only then is it important who they are as dancers. ~ Marcia Haydée", "Someone need not be perfect to be a great dancer – feeling a soul is more important than what the body can do. ~ Marcia Haydée", "No move is too tricky, no spin too excessive. For my partner. ~ John Hayes", "Aren't all ballets sexy? I think they should be. I can think of nothing more kinky than a prince chasing a swan around all night. ~ Sir Robert Murray Helpman", "For though man has sorrow and grief in his soul, at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles. Such is the holy gift of Terpsichore. ~ Hesiod, 7th century BC", "So you can't dance? Not at all? Not even one step? How can you say that you've taken any trouble to live when you won't even dance! ~ Hermann Hesse", "I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing. ~ Hillel", "He who cannot dance puts the blame on the floor. ~ Hindu proverb", "Dances without purpose have false starts and stops. ~ Hanya Holm (Johanna Eckert)", "The more you are challenged the more strength you gain. The strength and quiet you have are concentrated during conflict, and if you overcome the conflict it will buoy you up. ~ Hanya Holm (Johanna Eckert)", "Showing off the body or the emotions is tacky. ~ Hanya Holm (Johanna Eckert)", "Simplicity is a delight. ~ Hanya Holm (Johanna Eckert)", "I grew up with six brothers. That's how I learned to dance – waiting for the bathroom. ~ Bob Hope", "Dancing's just a conversation between two people. Talk to me. ~ Steven Rogers, 'Hope Floats'", "To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak. ~ Derrick 'Suwaima' Davis, Hopi/Chocktaw Indian", "Dance for yourself. If someone else understands, good. If not, then no matter – go right on doing what you love. ~ Louis Horst", "Oh, 'tis jesting, dancing, drinking Spins the heavy world around. ~ A. E. Housman", "The Dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing... There are times when the simple dignity of movement can fulfill the function of a volume of words. There are movements which impinge upon the nerves with a strength that is incomparable, for movement has power to stir the senses and emotions, unique in itself. This is the dancer's justification for being, and his reason for searching further for deeper aspects of his art. ~ Doris Humphrey", "Nothing so clearly and inevitably reveals the inner man than movement and gesture. It is quite possible, if one chooses, to conceal and dissimulate behind words or paintings or statues or other forms of human expression, but the moment you move you stand revealed, for good or ill, for what you are. ~ Doris Humphrey", "Remember that dance has a dimension beyond the physical. The body – as imperfect as it always is – is only part of the picture. Your energy, the quality of your movement, your feeling about the world, your dance spirit – that is what we see under the lights. ~ Mary Ellen Hunt", "The Dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing... There are times when the simple dignity of movement can fulfill the function of a volume of words. There are movements which impinge upon the nerves with a strength that is incomparable, for movement has power to stir the senses and emotions, unique in itself. This is the dancer's justification for being, and his reason for searching further for deeper aspects of his art. ~ Doris Humphrey", "Nothing so clearly and inevitably reveals the inner man than movement and gesture. It is quite possible, if one chooses, to conceal and dissimulate behind words or paintings or statues or other forms of human expression, but the moment you move you stand revealed, for good or ill, for what you are. ~ Doris Humphrey", "Remember that dance has a dimension beyond the physical. The body – as imperfect as it always is – is only part of the picture. Your energy, the quality of your movement, your feeling about the world, your dance spirit – that is what we see under the lights. ~ Mary Ellen Hunt", "He who makes a mistake is still our friend; he who adds to or shortens a melody is still our friend; but he who violates a rhythm unawares can no longer be our friend. ~ Ishaq Ibn Ibrahim (musician: 767-850 AD)", "The physical language of the body is so much more powerful than words. ~ Bill Irwin", "Knowledge passes from dance teacher into the student through the process of mane, which is often translated as imitation, but learning to dance is more a process of total identification than of simple copying. We repeat the movements of our teachers until we can duplicate them exactly, until, in a sense, we have absorbed the teacher's mastery into ourselves. Artistic technique must be fully integrated into the cells of our bodies if we are to use it to express what is in our hearts, and this takes many years of practice. ~ Mineko Iwasaki, in Geisha, A Life", "I love the whole world of dance, because dancing is really the emotions through bodily movement. And however you feel, you just bring out the inner feeling through your mood...people don't think about the importance of it. ~ Michael Jackson", "My goal in life is to give to the world what I was lucky to receive: the ecstasy of divine union through my music and my dance. ~ Michael Jackson", "I think James Brown is a genius you know when he's with the Famous Flames, unbelievable. I used to watch him on television and I used to get angry at the camera-man because whenever he would really start to dance they would be on a close-up so I couldn't see his feet. I'd shout 'Show him! Show him!' - so I could watch and learn. ~ Michael Jackson", "People tend to look at dancers like we are these little jewels, little cardboard cut-outs, and yet we have blood and guts and go through hell. ~ Susan Jaffe", "Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. ~ Clive James", "Dance is about never-ending aspiration. ~ Judith Jamison", "Dance is bigger than the physical body. Think bigger than that. When you extend your arm, it doesn't stop at the end of your fingers, because you're dancing bigger than that: you're dancing spirit. ~ Judith Jamison", "People come to see beauty, and I dance to give it to them. ~ Judith Jamison", "Dance, like music, is the expression of the human spirit. Dance is 'visual music'. ~ S. Janaki", "All dancing girls are nineteen years old. ~ Japanese proverb", "'Tis not enough that ev'ry Stander-by No glaring Errors in your Steps can 'spy; The Dance and Music must so nicely meet, Each Note must seem an Echo to your Feet; A nameless Grace must in each Movement dwell, Which words can ne'er express, nor Precepts tell... ! ~ Soame Jenyns", "The trained dancer must not only have grace and elegance, but also the leap of an Olympic hurdler, the balance of a tight-rope walker and panther-like strength and agility. ~ Camilla Jessel", "On the plié and rélevé is based the whole structure of the classical ballet. ~ Christian Johansson Principal teacher at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg", "What we hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence. ~ Samuel Johnson", "The body is a reservoir of all sorts of tensions and dark forces. And it's also the potential source of amazing energy. This thing wants to live. It is a powerful engine. The brain (is) a reservoir of images, dreams, fears, associations, language. And its potential we can't even begin to understand. Movement begins to negotiate the distance between the brain and the body and it can be surprising what we learn about each other. ~ Bill T. Jones", "We are part of each other and part of something bigger than our own egos. An artist should... bring into the world some vision. Dancers should ask, 'What is their work in the service of?'! ~ Bill T. Jones", "It is one thing to do your dance on a beach and quite another to collaborate intimately with the sand.\! ~ Deborah Jowitt", "If you want to dance seriously, do. You must think about it day and night, dream about it – desire it. ~ Christa Justus", "Creative self-expression through dance should not be a territory solely and defensively occupied by professional dancers; everyone is a dancer! The pleasure to be found in dancing and a pride in one's own movement should be the sole criteria – and not physical achievement and technical perfection. ~ Thomas Kaltenbrunner", "Western civilisation tends to couple artistic expression with accomplishment and productivity. Especially with dance, the criteria for beauty and worth are technical perfection and virtuosity. But in order for us to express ourselves we don't need to be the 'perfect' dancer, on the contrary - it is about the joy of dancing. ~ Thomas Kaltenbrunner", "Dance has been, so to speak, democratised: dancing has rid itself of the aristocratic attitude (professional versus amateur) and from extreme physical demands. Dance is judged not by its technical perfection but by its ability to communicate, the tangible bond between performer and audience. ~ Thomas Kaltenbrunner", "Your body is the voice that sings what there are no words for, the instrument that plays the music of your soul. ~ Katisha", "Most people think of ballet as children in little tutus. They don't know it is sweat, blood and tears as well! ~ Nan Keating", "One can never consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar. ~ Helen Keller", "I'd studied dance in Chicago every summer and taught it all winter, and I was well-rounded. I wasn't worried about getting a job on Broadway. In fact, I got one the first week. ~ Gene Kelly", "I got started dancing because I knew it was one way to meet girls. ~ Gene Kelly", "I wanted to invent some kind of American dance that was danced to the music that I grew up on: Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart and Irving Berlin. So I evolved a style that certainly didn't catch on right away – but I had some good mentors in New York who encouraged me. ~ Gene Kelly", "When Ginger Rogers danced with Astaire, it was the only time in the movies when you looked at the man, not the woman. ~ Gene Kelly", "My reverence for improvisational dance comes from those sacred moments in which I have felt forces deep within my body and psyche rise up together as partners. There is a feeling of humility and truth, and it is obvious what is to be done. ~ Keriac", "When it comes to the requirements for pleasing an audience, all the knowledge and instruction and apparatus in the world is worth less than one ounce of soul. ~ Ottawa Keyes", "I danced with passion to spite the music. ~ Gelsey Kirkland", "The dance goes on forever. So shall I. So shall we. ~ Gelsey Kirkland", "When you are on stage you are having an affair with three thousand people. ~ Gelsey Kirkland", "Ballet dancers are a self-chosen elite. To survive and surmount years of disciplinary preparation and seasons of even more arduous performance requires rigid determination and almost mindless self-abnegation. One other factor is difficult to predetermine: without a certain admixture of hysteria – sometimes masking as self-obsession, sometimes even counterfeiting incipient madness – performers, at once acrobats, artists, and animals, make little public impression. ~ Lincoln Kirstein", "Dance design is not simply one element; it is that without which ballet cannot exist. As aria is to opera, words to poetry, color to painting, so sequence in steps – their syntax, idiom, vocabulary – are the stuff of stage dancing. ~ Lincoln Kirstein", "If one had to define one essential gift with which a dancer needs to be endowed, there might be a rush of answers. A beautiful body, grace of line, graciousness of spirit, joy in the work, ability to please, unswerving integrity, relentless ambition towards some abstract perfection. Certainly all these factors determine a dancer’s character, and every element exists in some combination within the performing artist’s presence. ~ Lincoln Kirstein", "A weak first step transmits nothing. ~ Mai Kishikawa, 'Shall We Dansu'", "Many dances leave me untouched, unmoved. A dancer should be able to raise an arm and make someone cry – in the way Isadora Duncan did. It is a necessity for any art to move you. ~ Pauline Koner", "A dance performance is rather like going out into a battlefield. You have to hold the attention of as many as five to 10,000 people a lot of whom do not follow your language. ~ Yamini Krishnamurthy", "You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems,and suffer, and understand, for all that is life. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti", "Every teacher will tell you that you cannot dance classical technique with perfection, there is no such thing, there is no way. So you have to adapt the technique to your abilities or to your deficiencies. Learn to cheat! ~ Jiří Kylián", "The dancer, or dancers, must transform the stage for the audience as 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 entirely in the dance illusion. ~ Susanne K. Langer", "We ought to dance with rapture that we might be alive... and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. ~ D. H. Lawrence", "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", "Dancing is the coordination, the musicality, all of that combined into one feeling. It's not about a pirouette. The people who don't know ballet, who are there that night maybe for the first time aren't going to know 2 pirouettes from 3 pirouettes. They're going to be left with an impression and that impression, hopefully, is of movement and of dance – of a soul feeling the music. ~ Tina LeBlanc", "Never trust spiritual leader who cannot dance. ~ Mark Lee, screenwriter - as Mr. Miyagi, 'The Next Karate Kid'", "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", "When doctrines divide and 'isms',turn human against human, without speech, without silence, let us demonstrate. Let these demonstrations manifest everywhere. Not what we think or say but what we do shall avail – on with the dance. ~ Samuel L. Lewis", "When one lifts a ballerina, it is not her weight but her nature that causes the problem. ~ Maris Liepa", "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", "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", "The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress. ~ Hendrik Willem Van Loon", "Let go of her like the heart is being ripped from your chest. ~ Jennifer Lopez in 'Shall We Dance'", "The teacher doesn't teach, not really. The teacher offers stimulation and ways in which the person can educate himself or herself. At best the teacher wakes up that person and makes a person hungry. ~ Murray Louis", "Dancers work and live from the inside. They drive themselves constantly producing a glow that lights not only themselves but audience after audience. ~ Murray Louis", "Dancing is as old as love. ~ Lucian", "The lips are closed, for the dancer has plenty of other voices at his service. ~ Lucian", "Fred Astaire's great achievement was that instead of saying it he danced it – the main emotional moments [in his films] would be told through dance. ~ Baz Luhrman", "Striving for a connection with the audience is essential because you are in the moment - it is a give and take relationship.Catching someone's eye during a performance makes it more special. ~ Aubrey Lynch", "To touch, to move, to inspire. This is the true gift of dance. ~ Aubrey Lynch", "Dance is an art that imprints on the soul.  It is with you every moment, it expresses itself in everything you do. ~ Shirley MacLaine", "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", "Dance has to unfold with the grace of a tree giving out leaves, flowers and then tiny fruit. Nothing so beautiful can be done in haste. ~ Pt. Birju Maharaj", "Always the question for dancers is: Can we fly! ~ Jean-Christophe Maillot", "Whoever finds that they're not prepared to give their all should draw the inescapable conclusion from that and stop. ~ Jean-Christophe Maillot", "Even the ears must dance. ~ Natalya Makarova", "The expression should come from within oneself, conveying the spiritual – something between earth and heaven. And if one runs, one should not seem to touch the ground. ~ Natalya Makarova", "When you are dancing with your partner, for that two and a half minutes, you are in love with each other. You're corresponding with each other by the moves that you make. It's a love affair, between you and your partner and the music. You feel the music, you feel your partner, she feels you and she feels the music. So there the three of you are together. You've got a triangle, you know. Which one do you love best! ~ Frankie Manning", "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", "Glorious bouquets and storms of applause are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys. but to move an audience in such a role, to hear in the applause that unmistakable note which breaks through good theatre manners and comes from the heart, is to feel that you have won through to life itself. Such pleasure does not vanish with the fall of the curtain, but becomes part of one's own life. ~ Dame Alice Markova", "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 have the 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", "The dance exists exclusively in terms of the movement of the body, not only in the obvious sense that the dancer moves, but also in the less apparent sense that its response in the spectator is likewise a matter of body movement. ~ John Martin", "Wives are people who feel they don't dance enough. ~ Groucho Marx", "The ballet. I saw in the fugitive beauty of a dancer's gesture a symbol of life. It was achieved at the cost of unending effort but, with all the forces of gravity against it, a fleeting poise in mid-air, a lovely attitude worthy to be made immortal in a bas-relief, it was lost as soon as it was gained and there remained no more than the memory of an exquisite emotion. So life, lived variously and largely, becomes a work of art only when brought to its beautiful conclusion and is reduced to nothingness in the moment when it arrives at perfection. ~ W. Somerset Maugham", "Gypsy dance is never just to be dancing. Instead it seems to be a part of an immense and significant non-verbal vocabulary of Gypsy communication and behavior. It is at the heart of an essential transformation, a transcended state, an escape from the realities of their daily lives to a more satisfying state of mind. ~ Kate McGowen", "I started Ballet at a very young age and I was captivated immediately. It became my voice, means to overcome those final barriers to expressing myself. Letting myself fly free. The more experience I have, the more I get to know myself. ~ Amanda McKerrow", "Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance. ~ Margaret Mead", "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 mastered only because the body must not stand in the way of the soul's expression. ~ La Meri", "We have come to consider the word technique applicable only to movements that are so showy as to approach acrobatics... ~ La Meri", "Ballet: it's to be there and to experience every day, every minute, the ballets, the performances, growing-up, getting older, getting better. It's my world! ~ Monique Meunier", "If you dance with your heart your body will follow. ~ Mia Michaels", "Bleeding feet will bond us. ~ Liza Minnelli", "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 Minelli", "Come & trip it as ye go On the light fantastic toe. ~ John Milton", "Dancing is a way to meet people – you don't have to speak a word of their language – you communicate with your bodies. ~ Pimpa Mingkwan", "Once you begin improvising, allow your body to go with the flow of energy that comes forth. Dance is a nonverbal experience, and excessive thinking blocks the body's energy flow. ~ Sandra Cerny Minton", "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. ~ Molière or Jean Baptiste Poquelin; from a play", "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", "The dance, more than any other art, lives through the genius of its interpreters. ~ Lillian Moore", "If you hear a different drummer – dreamer, take a chance... The road you choose to travel means the difference in the dance. ~ Daniel Morgan", "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, Kitty Foyle", "Ballet class is like Life Lessons 101.  You learn some of life's most important lessons here that you will carry with you forever. ~ Joanne H. Morscher", "Do not deny yourself the opportunity for a spontaneous exchange between the musician and yourself. Let the music come inside of you and dance that music. It is this most intimate musical self and your most intimate dancing self. Feel the music. Fill yourself with it... This is the art of takseem. ~ Artemis Mourat", "Hold your hands out gently. Ask others to do the same. See how different each person looks. Each person has their own unique and natural beauty. Use this natural beauty when you dance. Respect your individuality. ~ Artemis Mourat", "People in the audience, when they've watched the dance, should feel like they've accomplished something, that they've gone on a journey.! ~  ~ Paul Mercurio", "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", "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", "Dance is about movement and can be an art, but it's also about communication – with yourself, as much as with other people. ~ Jan Murray", "Without dance I cannot feel my soul, hear my heart, or see my dreams. ~ Nahara", "Dance in the Middle East celebrates war and peace, birth and other passages of life; affirms the solidarity of the family, the tribe, the people; even effects oneness with God, or the All in the Muslim dhikr and hadra ceremonies. The line between spectator and participant often disappears; dancers, musicians and audience are interchangeable when the call of the blood breaks down social barriers. In the ancient Middle East, and among the Arabs before Islam, the blood was the life, and the blood has it's rhythm, and the quam – 'The People', the Arab Tribe – dances the dahiyya to the rhythm of the blood. ~ Edwina Nearing", "We were tap-dancers but we put more style into it, more bodywork, instead of just footwork. ~ Harold Nicholas", "Dance is the medium that ties together modern cultures with those that are fading, and a form that appeals to both the wealthy and the poor. ~ Madeline Nichols", "At present I am light, now I fly, now I see myself below me, now a god dances through me. ~ 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 add that one must also be able to dance with the pen! ~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche", "I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might more wish to be than 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", "I should not believe in a God who does not dance. ~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche", "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. ~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (also attributed to Angela Monet and George Carlin)", "We should consider every day lost during which we have not danced at least once. ~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche", "The Faun is Me. ~ Vaslav Nijinsky", "I have come to the conclusion that it is better to be silent than to speak. ~ Vaslav Nijinsky", "A cat is never a presentation, but an innocent happening. ~ Alwin Nikolais", "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 is advanced body language. ~ Kristy Nilsson © 1995", "Dance is fluent body language. ~ Kristy Nilsson © 2007", "Dancing is the world's favorite metaphor. ~ Kristy Nilsson © 1999", "Dance – no translation needed. ~ Kristy Nilsson © 1999", "It is not the movements that make a dance beautiful, it is the emotions that inspired the movements that make it beautiful. ~ Kristy Nilsson © 1999", "Musicality is when the dancers' movements appear to create the music – and not the other way around. ~ Kristy Nilsson © 2002", "The easiest part should be the best part; don't ignore the little steps. ~ Kristy Nilsson © 2006", "Dance is the poetic baring of the soul through motion. ~ Scott Nilsson © 2001", "Dance is the poetic baring of the soul through movement. ~ Scott Nilsson © 2001", "Life is better with a little drama in it. ~ Scott Nilsson © 2000", "Turn-out: Verb or Noun! ~ Antony Noa", "I will make an average man into an average dancer, provided he be passably well 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", "When the music and dance create with accord... their magic captivates both the heart and the mind. ~ Jean Georges Noverre", "A pas de deux is a dialogue of love. How can there be conversation if one partner is dumb! ~ Rudolf Nureyev", "Each time I try to go into society, it doesn't work. It's artificial, I will do it as a performance and get out as fast as I can. I don't fit. ~ Rudolf Nureyev", "My feet are dogs. ~ Rudolf Nureyev", "Technique is what you fall back on when you run out of inspiration. ~ Rudolf Nureyev", "When I miss class for one day, I know it.  When I miss class for two days, my teacher knows it. When I miss class for three days, the audience knows it. ~ 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", "Birds use their wings to fly, because they do not know how to dance. ~ Zeynep Okcu", "If somebody asks, 'What is a dance?' - how can you define it? But you can dance and you can know the inner feel of it. ~ Osho", "When movement becomes ecstatic, then this is dance. When the movement is so total there is no ego, then it is dance. ~ Osho", "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", "All great stars are competitive. That's a sign of a true artist – if you don't have the fire of competition deep down inside, you're never going to achieve anything. You have to want to be king of the heap. ~ Camille Paglia", "My experience with dancers has been very peculiar. They generally like a studio photo shoot before their actual performances. I sometimes wonder how they are more careful about their costumes during the shoot. It is interesting to see them adjust to their surroundings to get the best shots, they would get restless, put music on to give the best poses. The same evening you see them so involved in their art form, oblivious of costumes and makeup. ~ Avinash Pascricha, photographer", "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 dance, above all, is to enter into the motions of life. It is an action, a movement, a process. The dance of life is not so much a metaphor as a fact; to dance is to know oneself alone and to celebrate it. ~ Sherman Paul", "After I perform, I hope the audience is excited, inspired, and taken away from their everyday grind or work. Perhaps even inspired enough to get up and dance themselves. ~ Lenore Pavlakos", "I danced from the moment I could stand. ~ Anna Pavlova", "Master technique and then forget about it and be natural. ~ Anna Pavlova", "No one can arrive from being talented alone. God gives talent; work transforms talent into genius. ~ Anna Pavlova", "Where there is no heart there is no art. ~ Anna Pavlova", "If I can not dance, I shall die! ~ Anna Pavlova", "Get my swan costume ready. ~ Anna Pavlova's last words", "Hence it is from the representation of things spoken by means of posture and gesture that the whole of the art of dance has been elaborated. ~ Plato", "The Dance, of all the arts, is the one that most influences the soul. Dancing is divine in its nature and is the gift of God. ~ Plato", "...the instinctive desire to explain words by gestures of the entire body. ~ Plato (concerning dancing)", "To sing well and to dance is to be well educated. ~ Plato", "The only weapon I had was my dancing. With that I fought like a general without an army. If I could have saved all the energy I wasted on my struggle it would have sufficed me to cover a dozen ballets. ~ Maya Plisetskaya (To Gennady Smakov on the persecution she suffered from the KGB, while a superstar at the Bolshoi.)", "And men must walk at least before they dance. ~ Alexander Pope", "True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance. ~ Alexander Pope", "Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance. ~ Ezra Pound", "Dancing serves no necessary use, no profitable, laudable, or pious end at all. It is only from the inbred pravity, vanity, wantonness, incontinency, pride, profaneness, or madness of man's depraved nature. ~ Puritan William Prynne", "The way to heaven is too steep, too narrow for men to dance in and keep revel rout. No way is large or smooth enough for capering rousters, for jumping, skipping, dancing dames but that broad, beaten, pleasant road that leads to hell. The gate of heaven is too narrow for whole rounds, whole troops of dancers to march in together. ~ Puritan William Prynne", "Dance like there's nobody watching, Love like you'll never be hurt. Sing like there's nobody listening, And live like it's heaven on earth. ~ William W. Purkey", "Ballet is a dance executed by the human soul. ~ Alexander Pushkin", "Dance, like music and other arts, helps us rise above the beast in ourselves. ~ Sudharani Raghupathy", "Forget the dancer, the center of the ego. Become the dance. Then the dancer disappears and only the dance remains. Then the dancer is the dance. There is no dancer separate from dance, no dance separate from the dancer. ~ Acharya Rajneesh", "My long association with classical dance forms makes it difficult for me to change and accept radical transformations. On further thought, I feel change is inevitable and dance is no exception. Modernity need not be viewed as a thing to be confronted. Many a time certain aspects of modernity have helped regeneration. Hence, the introduction of new conceptualisation and innovative techniques are necessary for dance to grow. However not at the cost of tradition. Branching off or grafting need not necessarily involve uprooting the tree. ... the introduction of new forms need not be a cause for concern. I believe that ultimately it is the core values that enable art forms to survive. ~ Leela Ramanathan", "Listen to the music. ~ Hossam Ramzy", "I knew I was completely missing out many things but I also knew that was the price I had to pay for what would truly make me happy, so it was not a painful sacrifice. But I was very conscious of what I was missing. I accepted that and took joy in it. ~ Anthony Randazzo", "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. ~ Ann Reinking", "There is a general decline of taste for classical dance, which is neglected and this must be developed from the grassroots. There is so much of razzle-dazzle... that classical dance suffers. ~ Kanak Rele", "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 remains to shed light, provoke thought, entertain, and move through dance. ~ Dwight Rhoden", "The gymnasium of running, walking on stilts, climbing, etc. stells and makes hardy single powers and muscles, but dancing, like a corporeal poesy, embellishes, exercises, and equalizes all the muscles at once. ~ Jean Paul Richter (Stell: to place firmly in position.)", "You get obsessed by dancing there seems to be no choice. Sometimes you are miserable, sometimes you are floating in elation. But you can't leave it alone until the passion is spun out. If you are lucky you try not to hate it when you leave. ~ Lisa Rinehart", "I remember looking around in company class and seeing all the faces I would later watch twice a week onstage and realizing that they were normal people and had to take ballet class too! It was definitely a big adjustment being at the theater 10 to 12 hours a day. ~ Jennifer Ringer", "Dance, in its broadest sense, is a physical acknowledgment of the rhythm of the universe and of our own lives. ~ Carol Roan", "You danced...(pointing to the dancers) ...and you didn't! (pointing to the audience) ~ Mario Robau", "Dance is like life, it exists as you're flitting through it, and when it's over, it's done. ~ Jerome Robbins", "I told you to sell it, not give it away. ~ Jerome Robbins", "Either you do the pirouette or you shoot yourself. One or the other, but something must happen. ~ Monet Robier", "Everyday there must be something I can't do, otherwise it's boring. ~ Monet Robier", "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", "Dance is movement, is action, and like all action, it reveals us to ourselves in the doing. ~ Gabrielle Roth", "The self is a dance, constantly in motion. ~ Gabrielle Roth", "When we give ourselves over completely to the spirit of the dance, it becomes a prayer. ~ Gabrielle Roth", "I was a ballerina. I had to quit after I injured a groin muscle. It wasn't mine. ~ Rita Rudner", "In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest, where no one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art. ~ Rumi", "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", "A solid, confident and well-founded sense of self worth is one of the most attractive features a woman can have. It is completely independent of physical form, and dance is one of many avenues to developing that. ~ Aziza Sa'id", "But in reality we are accompanied by the whole dancing universe. ~ Ruth St. Denis", "I have performed for thousands when 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 different from 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 communication between 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", "It is this mission of the dancer to contribute to the betterment of all mankind. ~ Ruth St. Denis", "It was then that my religious consciousness emerged to flower years afterward into definite forms of religious dancing in which there is no sense of division between spirit and flesh, religion and art. ~ Ruth St. Denis", "The Gods have meant That I should dance And in some mystic hour I shall move to unheard rhythms Of the cosmic orchestra of heaven And you will know the language Of my wordless poems And will come to me For that is why I dance. ~ Ruth St. Denis", "The real message of the Dance opens up the vistas of life to all who have the urge to express beauty with no other instrument than their own bodies, with no apparatus and no dependence on anything other than space. ~ Ruth St. Denis", "We should realize in a vivid and revolutionary sense that we are not in our bodies but our bodies are in us. ~ Ruth St. Denis", "When you are fifty, you're neither young nor old; you're just uninteresting. When you are sixty, and still dancing, you become something of a curiosity. And boy! if you hit seventy, and can still get a foot off the ground, you're phenomenal! ~ Ruth St. Denis", "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", "Dancing up the full moon Round some fair new altar Trample the soft blossoms of fine grass. ~ Sappho", "The real self of an artiste lies in art, so when an artiste performs, all the pain, trauma and tension get released through art, be it dancing, painting, singing, writing or even martial arts. ~ Mrinalini Sarabhai", "There is no other knowledge, no other learning, no other art... that is not found in dance. ~ Natya Sastra", "Dance, like music, knows no geographical boundaries, no linguistic barriers and no racial divisions. All walls crumble where art is concerned. It is a great unifying and integrating force. ~ Vempatti Chinna Satyam", "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", "There was never a merry world since the fairies left off dancing. ~ John Selden", "Maya (was) able to absorb within a month what some other dancers cannot do in a decade. ~ Marina Semyonova on Maya Plisetskaya", "It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper. ~ Rod Serling", "Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire. ~ Fred Sero", "He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May. ~ William Shakespeare, 'Merry Wives of Windsor'", "She is your treasure, she must have a husband; I must dance barefoot on her wedding day ... ! ~ William Shakespeare, 'Taming of the Shrew'", "A star danced, and under that was I born. ~ William Shakespeare, “Much Ado About Nothing”", "When you do dance, I wish you a wave o' the sea, that you might ever do. ~ William Shakespeare, 'Winter's Tale'", "Wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly modest as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance, and with his bad legs, falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave. ~ William Shakespeare, 'Much Ado About Nothing'", "All the world is a stage... and life is the dance there performed. ~ Half Shakespeare & half anonymous", "Just like it is rare to get a good guru, it is equally rare for gurus to get a good disciple. Every performer is not an able guru and vice-versa. Not everyone has the kind of patience required for teaching.! ~ Pt Shiv Kumar Sharma", "Dance communicates man’s deepest, highest and most truly spiritual thoughts and emotions far better than words, spoken or written. ~ Ted Shawn", "Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made. ~ Ted Shawn", "Education in the art of dance is education of the whole man - his physical, mental and emotional natures are disciplined and nourished simultaneously in dance. ~ Ted Shawn", "I believe that dance communicates man's deepest, highest and most truly spiritual thoughts and emotions far better than words, spoken or written. ~ Ted Shawn", "I wanted to see if the American man in plain brown pants and a bare torso could speak profound things. ~ Ted Shawn", "Man has used human rhythmic movement as raw material out of which to create works of art, as the composer of music uses sound, the sculptor uses stone and wood, the painter his pigments, and the writer – words. ~ Ted Shawn", "Dancing is more than rhythmically performing a series of grouped or patterned movements. That is exercise. Dancing is artistic self-expression and good dancing is a synergism between the dancer and the music. Great dancing creates a synergy between the dancer, the music and the audience! ~ Shibar", "A choreographic idea flows only as fast as the initiator can communicate it to bodies and see them realize it.! ~ Marcia B. Siegal", "Classical language and musicality are not simply effete traditions belonging to the bygone upper classes. The vocabulary and manner of classical ballet express a high order of discipline and restraint, a sense of harmony with forces larger and more lasting than the individual. ~ Marsha B. Siegel", "What is modern about modern dance is its resistance to the past, its response to the present, its constant redefining if the idea of dance. ~ Marsha B. Siegel", "(Fred Astaire) is a model for transforming the entire body into a Jazz instrument. He seems to understand that Jazz rhythm has a better chance of impacting the viewer when expressed through several parts of the body at once, not just the feet... like a drummer, he plays these gestures against the space, as if the air were stacked with drum heads and his chief concern was to zing them with sharpshooter precision. ~ Billy Siegenfeld", "Draw a crazy picture Write a nutty poem Sing a mumble-gumble song Whistle through your comb Do a loony-goony dance 'Cross the kitchen floor Put something silly in the world That ain't been there before. ~ Shel Silverstein", "Dancing is silent poetry. ~ Simonides", "Whoever would have his body supple, easy and healthful should learn to dance. ~ Socrates (Xenophon)", "The way people move is their autobiography in motion. ~ Gerry Spence", "Be responsible, a good communicator, a good team player, while pursuing individual dreams, and understanding the pitfalls of being a perfectionist – a common characteristic among ballet staff and students around the world. ~ Mavis Staines", "Igor Stravinsky yelling at Vaslav Nijinsky: There is no 27 in my music! Nijinsky's response: Dancers and musicians have always counted music differently.", "Dance is the essence of mystery. Through dance we experience a dimension that the linear mind is not structured to perceive. It may have been dance that enabled us to first conceive of existences beyond our immediate physical experience, thereby creating the concept of spirituality, of 'God'. ~ Iris Stewart, 'Sacred Woman Sacred Dance'", "For all those who are interested in the spiritual, emotional, intellectual, esthetic, historical or any other aspects of our dance art... It is high time that our universities had faculties for dance, giving the art its due place in the academic world. ~ Padma Subrahmanyam", "But oh, she dances such a way!  No sun upon an Easter-day  Is half so fine a sight! ~ Sir John Suckling", "Man must create – or destroy. ~ David Suggs", "Listen to the silence as it echoes around you. Ancient spirits dance to it. ~ Amber Coverdale Sumrall", "Dance is the pure language of the soul – it's been with us from the very beginning. ~ Patrick Swayze", "... a person who can connect with their partner, another human being who can connect with their soul - it's not just learning steps, it's about expressing something. I've found in dancing all my life that I can release something as a dancer that I can't in any other way... ! ~ Patrick Swayze", "A poetic critical review of Maria Taglioni from 1838 Her dance is an Acted Poem, sparkling with images... She achieves the office of wings, without their incumbrance (sic). Her sweetness and gentleness have a wooing tone, which breathes from her with no more external appearance than the aroma from flowers. ~ The Monthly Chronicle, excerpted from Vol. 32 The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction - 1838", "Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf. ~ Rabindranath Tagore", "I don't mind being listed alphabetically. I do mind being treated alphabetically. ~ Maria Tallchief", "Dancing was It. Dancing was what life was all about. If you wanted to be a dancer, you didn't just want it, you felt chosen to be one... ~ Paul Taylor", "For a dancer, to be able to perform well, most of his waking hours must be devoted to preparing for the holy white instant of performance. ~ Paul Taylor", "I like to think dance is an international language that all people can appreciate. All societies have some form of dance as a form of communication. ~ Paul Taylor", "I would like to make it clear from the start that these dances are primarily meant to be a kind of food for the eye. If they evoke dramatic images and riddles, the key to their solution lies not so much in the brain, but in the senses and the eye of the spectator. ~ Paul Taylor", "It's a religion, a monstrous itch, a huge and illogical church. In my case, even before learning to dance, I was positive I'd been ordained to it... ! ~ Paul Taylor", "Dance just gets more exciting the more you know about it, which is why you have to do it well at school so you can spend the rest of your life supporting your habit. ~ Kay Teague", "All night have the roses heard The flute, violin, bassoon; All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd To the dancers dancing in tune; Till a silence fell with the waking bird, And a hush with the setting moon. ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson", "They who love dancing too much seem to have more brains in their feet than in their head. ~ Terence (c. 190-159 BCE)", "A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I'm beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things. ~ Twyla Tharp", "Dancing is like bank robbery, it takes split second timing. ~ Twyla Tharp", "Twyla Tharp on creating “Brahms/Hande” with Jerome Robbins: He basically made me crazy, because it would be like, you know, I plan what I'm going to do, I do it, I'm ready to move on; he plans what he's going to do, he does it, he's ready to go back. ~ Twyla Tharp", "I also had a will that let me eliminate everything that stood in the way of my becoming the best dancer I could be. By a gradual process... (I)  had invested every bit of my dreams, my hopes, my energies in defining myself as a dancer. ~ Twyla Tharp", "I always, somehow, knew that I was going to dance. ~ Twyla Tharp", "I began to discriminate between fear and excitement. The two, though very close, are completely different. Fear is negative excitement, choking your imagination. Real excitement produces an energy that overcomes apprehension and makes you want to close in on your goal. ~ Twyla Tharp", "I do everything I know how in a dance. ~ Twyla Tharp", "I often say that in making dances I can make a world where I think things are done morally, done democratically, done honestly. ~ Twyla Tharp", "I think that probably the moments of discovery do come from a place that is not totally organized. Order is something that we already know about. Discoveries are in a place we don't already know about. ~ Twyla Tharp", "I would have to challenge the term, modern dance. I don't really use that term in relation to my work. I simply think of it as dancing. I think of it as moving. ~ Twyla Tharp", "I'm not one who divides music, dance or art into various categories. Either something works, or it doesn't. ~ Twyla Tharp", "It's extremely arrogant and foolish to think you can ever outwit your audience. ~ Twyla Tharp", "It's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer. ~ Twyla Tharp", "The only thing I fear more than change is no change. ~ Twyla Tharp", "This is not a pleasant route for many young people to consider. You have to be either hopelessly passionate, or very stupid. ~ Twyla Tharp", "Usually kids who are talented have the brashness to think they can do anything, but they don't often get the chance to see how close they can come. ~ Twyla Tharp", "We're a machine and we have to be worked in the same way we have to be fed. ~ Twyla Tharp", "You have to believe there's something at the other side. And you have to have faith in yourself. You have to think that you have the tools to accomplish it. ~ Twyla Tharp", "Long experience has taught me that the crux of my fortunes is whether I can radiate good will toward my audience. There is only one way to do it and that is to feel it. You can fool the eyes and minds of the audience, but you cannot fool their hearts. ~ Howard Thurston", "Don't dream it – dance it! ~ W.M Tory", "The dance is over, the applause subsided but the joy and feeling will stay with you forever. ~ W.M Tory", "I would like to tell all dancers to forget themselves and the desire for self-display. They must become completely absorbed in the dance. Even in a classical variation there should never be any thought of a dancer doing a variation – he should become identified with it. ~ Anthony Tudor", "If I see a human body on the stage, I don't see it as an abstraction. I see it as a body. ~ Anthony Tudor", "I had longed to be a butterfly, and I was one at last. I attended private parties in sumptuous evening dress, simpered and aired my graces like a born beau, and polkaed and schoisched with a step peculiar to myself – and the kangaroo. ~ Mark Twain in 'Roughing It (after he finally found employment in San Francisco)", "I am lost, and I rejoice in the openness I cannot decide where to go, so for now, I will dance where I am and be. There is no goal, no destination, just wilderness and life and being. I sing and dance and live in the wilderness, and I am home. ~ Tziporah", "It is not enough to merely leave Egypt. To truly be free of Mitzrayim's grasp, you must emerge from the waters and dance on dry land. ~ Tziporah", "Whenever we dig down into the achievements of a creative artist, we invariably trace them to the beginning of all beginnings: labour. ~ Galina Ulanova", "Do you not realize that dance is the pure act of metamorphosis! ~ Paul Valéry", "Dance is like wine it matures with every performance. ~ Alarmel Valli", "Whoever has seen the masked at a ball dance amicably together, and take hold of hands without knowing each other, leaving the next moment to meet no more, can form an idea of the world. ~ Vauvenargues", "What's so wonderful about ballet is that it's mind-driven physicality. It's almost a Greek ideal of body, mind, and form. ~ Edward Villella", "Sex in a dance is in the eyes of the beholder. I never thought my dances sexy. I suppose that's because I see myself with my face washed, and to me I look like a rabbit. ~ Gwen Verdon", "The sensitive artiste develops the 'hearing ear' and the 'seeing eye' which forever lead one to seek search, making one’s entire life a voyage of discovery'. ~ Chitra Visweswaran", "Dancing is an art because it is subject to rules. ~ Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire", "Let us read and let us dance – two amusements that will never do any harm to the world. ~ Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire", "Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. ~ Kurt Vonnegut", "The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. ~ William Arthur Ward", "Try to be fearless... fear can inhibit you and keep you from a life. ~ Miranda Weese", "I have always added dance to my productions. When I was directing theatre, I added dance sequences where they didn't exist in the play. I think dance is the ultimate form of expression. ~ Valerie Weiss", "I came to see that movement is one of the great laws of life. It is the primary medium of our aliveness, the flow of energy going on in us like a river all the time, awake or asleep, twenty-four hours a day. Our movement is our behavior; there is a direct connection between what we are like and how we move... As people begin to move in their own way, they are faced with feelings of surprise and delight and often of anxiety and embarrassment. Judgments, corrections and explanations are of no use. It is their movement, and it happened just that way. ~ Mary Whitehouse", "I dance with the dancers. ~ Walt Whitman", "Strong and convincing art has never arisen from theories. ~ Mary Wigman", "The dance grew into a colorful flower bouquet which caught and contained the glow of sun-happy summer days, the secret of star-studded nights, and the wistful sweetness of overcast and rainy hours. ~ Mary Wigman", "Ballet: men wearing pants so tight that you can tell what religion they are. ~ Robin Williams", "Though talent is wonderful, dance is 80% work and 20% talent. ~ Tad Williams", "Being a dancer is just an extension of being a human being. ~ Tovaris Wilson", "Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance. ~ Oprah Winfrey", "I'm dancing to the music of the madness inside me. ~ George C. Wolfe", "When I play on my fiddle in Dooney  Folk dance like a wave on the sea. ~ William Butler Yeats", "And the merry love the fiddle, and the merry love to dance. ~ William Butler Yeats", "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,  How can we know the dancer from the dance! ~ William Butler Yeats", "On dancing on pointe: Why don't they just get taller girls! ~ Henny Youngman", "Dance, one of the oldest forms of artistic expression, requires only the human body for its realization. ~ Igor Youskevitch", "Teach me to dance! ~ from 'Zorba the Greek' Michael Cacoyannis, Screenwriter; after a novel by Nikos Kazantzakis", "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. ~ Attributed to: Laurie Anderson, David Breskin, David Byrne, William S. Burroughs, John Cage, George Carlin, Elvis Costello, Miles Davis, Nick Lowe, Steve Martin, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Mark Mothersbaugh, Martin Mull, Clara Schumann, W.G. 'Snuffy' Walden, Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Zappa", "A day I don't dance is a day I don't live. ~ unattributed", "A football player is a dancer built to military specifications. ~ unattributed", "All it takes is to convince your mind to move your feet. ~ unattributed", "All that music and only two feet. ~ unattributed", "Anyone who thinks sunshine is happiness has never danced in the rain. ~ unattributed", "A passionate dancer is a poet in action. ~ unattributed", "Ballet dancers miss so much because of their exhausting schedules, many dancers hardly seem to notice the world around them. A classical dancer is always a loner, always self-involved. ~ unattributed", "Ballet discipline: only the true believer would suffer the rigors it demanded. ~ unattributed", "Be an awake dreamer: cultivating the skills that you need, finding out the talents you have and yet not letting go of your dream of dancing. ~ unattributed", "Being a dancer means sacrificing a lot. It's a life based on discipline and hard work, hardly the normal state of affairs for a teenager. Of course, if you love to dance more than anything, then it's also time well spent. Only you can decide. Just make sure you're listening to your heart. ~ unattributed", "Blood, sweat and tears of the ballet world: the nuts and bolts behind ballet's ethereal stage presence. ~ unattributed", "Choosing a life in dance is like taking vows in a nunnery, with similar frustrations. ~ unattributed", "Common sense would tell parents never to send their children to a ballet school. Common sense would tell teenagers that there is a wider and happier world beyond the grueling strictures of daily barre and class. Common sense would tell the graduating student that there are infinitely superior ways of making money than joining a professional ballet company. Common sense would tell a young dancer that very few (laughably few) of his or her colleagues will ever make it to the top or even near the top. Yet... there remains the dance and the dancer. ~ unattributed", "Dance from your heart and love your music, and the audience will love you in return. ~ unattributed", "Dance has a way of teaching people how to live. ~ unattributed", "Dance is a delicate balance between perfection and beauty. ~ unattributed", "Dance is a golden language written by the body. ~ unattributed", "Dance is an hourly and daily discipline, but it is also lifelong happiness. ~ unattributed", "Dance is life, the rest is just details. ~ unattributed", "Dance is not an answer. Dance is a question. Yes! is the answer. ~ unattributed", "Dance is the thing that challenges the mind, body and soul. ~ unattributed", "Dance isn't a form – it's a way of life. ~ unattributed", "Dance isn't what I do, it's who I am. ~ unattributed", "Dance to express, not to impress. ~ unattributed", "Dancers are among the most passionate and dedicated of artists and rarely take their work for granted. ~ unattributed", "Dancers aren't made of their technique, but their passion. ~ unattributed", "Dancers are team players and individuals at the same time. And it's... one of the professions in which students think about the excitement it can give them, rather than how much money they're going to make. Dance people don't ever ask that. That, in itself, is what is beautiful about the human spirit. ~ unattributed", "Dancers keep looking for the perfect teacher without realizing that it's all there within themselves. You teach yourself; your teacher is a guide. If you do not hear the advice, corrections and words of your guide, it makes no difference how great the teacher. You will never dance. ~ unattributed", "Dancers offer us our only earthly chance to catch a glimpse of the angelic host. ~ unattributed", "Dancing is like life: it's good to have a plan, but be prepared to improvise. ~ unattributed", "Dancing with the feet is one thing, but dancing with the heart is another. ~ unattributed", "Eat, drink, sleep... dance! ~ unattributed", "Even the greatest dancers in the world must submit throughout their careers to the continual corrections of daily class. ~ unattributed", "Every day, we must dance. If only in our minds. ~ unattributed", "Every day, we must dance. If only in our minds. Why do we dance? Because we're happy to be alive. So every day, we must dance to say thank you to God. Thank you for life. ~ unattributed", "Every day, we must dance to say thank you God. Thank you for life. ~ unattributed", "For some, dancing is an excuse to make money. For the best, money is an excuse to dance. ~ unattributed", "For the ballet dancer, pain is a constant reality. ~ unattributed", "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels. ~ unattributed", "I am a dancer. I twirl, leap, and spin. I jump, pirouette, and tap. I am a dancer. I feel pain and fear. I feel defeat and failure. Yet, I keep going. I smile, I practice, I perform. I have grace and beauty. ~ unattributed", "I do not dance because I am happy, I am happy because I dance. ~ unattributed", "I hear the applause. I perform and do my best. Sometimes I fail. I don't give up. For I am a dancer. I am brave and strong. I dance not for fame and glory. But for how I feel inside. I am happiness, joy, love, and excitement. Strife, talent, joy. Determination and beauty. I am a dancer. ~ unattributed", "I still struggle in ballet class, but now I have a sense of the pure joy of being in class, rather than going after an unattainable ideal. ~ unattributed", "I was desperate in those days to do thirty-two fouettés, right and left. I still thought, in my heart, that somehow it would happen, that I'd become a dancer. ~ unattributed", "I’d rather be dancing. ~ unattributed", "If dancing was any easier, they would call it football. ~ unattributed", "If it were not for dreams there would not be such a thing as ballet, the cruelest of the performing arts. ~ unattributed", "If you have to ask me why I dance, you’ll never understand. ~ unattributed", "If you say you can you can, but if you say you can't your right! ~ unattributed", "If you're not dancing, you're wasting your feet. ~ unattributed", "If you're on thin ice you might as well be dancing. ~ unattributed", "In conversation as in dance, each is the mirror of other. ~ unattributed", "In dancing, the women usually know the steps and the men know the holds. ~ unattributed", "In order to dance professionally, one must sacrifice everything else, including individual happiness, to an all-consuming god of Art. ~ unattributed", "In swing, whatever works is right. ~ unattributed", "It doesn't matter where you are on the stage, just as long as you're there. ~ unattributed", "It isn't necessarily a matter of minimal experience or talent; it's also a question of desire. ~ unattributed", "It's not the turning that is hard in pirouettes, it's that you gotta keep on doing it. ~ unattributed", "Lesser dancers stumble, better dancers syncopate. ~ unattributed", "Let the music move your body. ~ unattributed", "Letting go of perfectionism, so ingrained in the nature of a ballet dancer, can be the most difficult thing. ~ unattributed", "Life is a dance, from one stage to the next. ~ unattributed", "Listen to your heartbeat and dance. ~ unattributed", "My feet are never at a loss for words. ~ unattributed", "[The ballet world] Once you're in there's no way out. It's like that enchanted forest in the Sleeping Beauty after everybody goes under the spell. ~ unattributed", "One's concentration as a performer must remain centered on the action of which one is a part. For it is in truth only one's own concentration on the imagined reality of the role that can force the audience's attention to that same place. ~ unattributed", "Only the wise can dance the rhythm of life. ~ unattributed", "Safety pins are a belly-dancer's best friend. ~ unattributed", "Seen from the wings, a ballerina's life is made-up of sheer physical misery relieved only by the euphoria of performance. Physical agony is a normal thing backstage and arouses the awe and pity only of outsiders unused to its sight. ~ unattributed", "Set yourself up for success and anything is possible. ~ unattributed", "Smart girls dance. If you weren't smart, you wouldn't be here. ~ unattributed", "Socrates learned to dance when he was 70 because he felt that an essential part of himself had been neglected. ~ unattributed", "Some people march to a different drummer... and some people polka. ~ unattributed", "Striving for a connection with the audience is essential because you are in the moment – it is a give and take relationship. ~ unattributed", "Tap Dancers Have Rhythm in Their Soles. ~ unattributed", "Thank God that you are able to dance... remember there are those who cannot even walk. ~ unattributed", "The art of dance is above all about the gestures of what one feels with one's heart. ~ unattributed", "The ballet toe shoe is one of the few instruments of torture to survive intact into our time. ~ unattributed", "The best dancer is one who dances with expression and meaning, not the one who finishes first. ~ unattributed", "The dispassionate preparation that goes into one of the most romantic performing arts. ~ unattributed", "The feet may learn the steps, but only the spirit can dance. ~ unattributed", "The grinding discipline, the long, lonely hours of practice, the responsibility to dance, the rehearsals and the thrill of the stage: an unbroken session of days and years devoted to being a dancer. ~ unattributed", "The hardships of working as a dancer, including physical and psychological abuse and low pay, are plainly worth it. ~ unattributed", "The orchestra, the lights, the smell of make-up and powder, the back-stage nitty-gritty, the sore feet, the hard work and the petty intrigues: the real life of a ballet dancer. ~ unattributed", "The rewarding routine of dance. ~ unattributed", "There are never mistakes, just unexpected solos. ~ unattributed", "Those hours spent dancing are not deducted from ones life span. ~ unattributed", "To dance is like speaking in silence. It is to everything without saying a word. ~ unattributed", "To tap or not to tap... silly question!! ~ unattributed", "Until (AIDS is stopped) we will dance for life. ~ unattributed", "We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams. ~ unattributed", "We dancers are very lonely people. We work together but we are very much self-made, self-centered individuals. ~ unattributed", "We do not always dance because we are happy, but we dance and cannot help but become happy. ~ unattributed", "When in doubt... dance! ~ unattributed", "When dancing: 1. Never try to step with the foot on which you are standing, 2. Never try to turn on a foot on which you are not standing, and 3. Never dance when you are too tired to know whether you are adhering to principles 1 and 2. ~ unattributed", "When some men dance they're all feet, and when they stop they're all hand! ~ unattributed", "Why do I dance? Why do you breathe! ~ unattributed", "Why do we dance? Because we're happy to be alive. ~ unattributed", "You can dance anywhere, even if only in your heart. ~ unattributed", "You can dance perfectly, but you will be never an artist if you dance without your soul. ~ unattributed", "You can't count on other people to provide happiness, the unexpected reward that comes, perversely, to those not obsessed with seeking it. The dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love will never be a good dancer. ~ unattributed", "You can't make a pointe if you don't understand the details. ~ unattributed", "You don't stop dancing because you grow old, you grow old because you stop dancing. ~ unattributed", "You know you're dancing when tears of pain and happiness blend in with your sweat. ~ unattributed", "You live it, you breath it, you dance it. ~ unattributed", "You never know whether being a dancer is a dream or reality. The world on stage is a fairy-tale world. You end an evening enveloped in the applause from the audience. But outside the theater, you are back into reality, and when you come home you realize that you are just an ordinary person like everybody else. ~ unattributed", "You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. ~ unattributed", "Your dance identifies who you are. ~ unattributed", "Your love for yourself is only shown when you are dancing freely. ~ unattributed" ); /* Variables : Length of array and a random number up to it */ qlength=quotes.length-1 rndquote=Math.round(Math.random()*qlength); /* Display the random quote */ function writeQuote() { document.write(quotes[rndquote]); document.write(" "); document.write(" "); }