Dance Quotes

"Anybody can and should dance... It's good for the body and the spirit."

-Isadora Duncan

"Dance is the hidden language of the soul."

-Martha Graham

I see dance being used as communication between body and soul, to express what is too deep to find words for.

-Ruth St. Denis

6-14-02

The guts carry the feet, not the feet the guts.

-Cervantes

"I tired to get discovered, only to realize that I had received inadequate training for the performing world. Since then, I have devoted my life to becoming the best teacher possible to assure none of my students will be cheated out of a chance at a career in Dance."

-Juni Roberts

"Dance is the perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire."

"Dancing on stage is a lot more than just a pretty coustume, you have to know what you're doing."

"A degenerated and demoralizing musical system is given a disgusting christening as 'swing' and turned loose to gnaw away the moral fiber of young people... Jam sessions, jitterbugs and cannibalistic rhythmic orgies are wooing our youth along the primrose path to Hell!"

-The Archbishop of Dublique, 1938

"I just put my feet in the ground and move them around."

-Fred Astaire

"First comes the sweat; then comes the beauty."

-George Ballanchine

"I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who *have* to dance."

-George Balanchine

"Someone once said that dancers work just as hard as policemen, always alert, always tense, but see policemen don't have to be beautiful at the same time."

-George Balanchine

"There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them."

-Vicki Baum

"Dance, v.i. To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably with arms about your neighbor's wife or daughter. There are many kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two sexes have two characteristis in common: they are conspicuously innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious."

-Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary)

"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

The guts carry the feet, not the feet the guts.

-Cervantes

"Just remember when you're not practicing that someone somewhere is and when you meet them, they will win."

-Jaques D'Amboise

"You can't see a painter or a writer or a musician if you just look at them, but you can see a dancer in a child if they've studied ballet for a year."

-"The Dancer and the Dance" movie

"There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a bit of good."

-Edwin Denby or Demby... anyone know which one it is?

"Anybody can and should dance... It's good for the body and the spirit."

-Isadora Duncan

"There are little eyes upon you
And they're watching night and day.
There are little ears that quickly
Take in every word you say.
There are little hands all eager
To do anything you do;
And a little girl who's dreaming
Of the day she'll be like you.
You're the little girl's idol,
You're the wisest of the wise.
In her little mind about you
No suspicions ever rise.
She believes in you devoutly,
Holds all you say and do;
She will say and do in your way
When she's all grown up like you.
There's a wide eyed little girl
Who believes you're always right;
And her eyes are always opened,
And she watches day and night.
You are setting an example
Every day in all you do,
For the little girl who's waiting
To grow up to be like you."

-Eyes Upon A Dance Teacher

"Plie is the first thing you learn and the last thing you master."

-Suzanne Farrell

Dance is the hidden language of the soul.

-Martha Graham

"Great dancers are not great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion."

-Martha Graham

"Newton's First Law of Dance: A Follower in motion continues in motion until an external force acts upon her."

-Ken Haltenhoff

"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

"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!"

-Jiri Kylian, Netherland Dance Theater (Dance Magazine)

"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 (SFB)

I just wanna dance
Is that a crime?
Alright then, ooh, uh

-Jennifer Lopez, "Play"

"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

"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

"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

"We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once."

-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Dancing is an AMAZING activity. You can go up to a gorgeous woman that you've never met before, spend three minutes touching her virtually anywhere on her body, and she THANKS you for it afterwards!"

-Mario Robau, Jr. at a workshop in Bethesda, MD Spring, 1991

"I tired to get discovered, only to realize that I had received inadequate training for the performing world. Since then, I have devoted my life to becoming the best teacher possible to assure none of my students will be cheated out of a chance at a career in Dance."

-Juni Roberts

"Women have to do everything that a man does, but backwards and in high heels!"

-Ginger Rogers

"Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room."

-Mary Smich, Chicago Tribune, 1997

I see dance being used as communication between body and soul, to express what is too deep to find words for.

-Ruth St. Denis

"[Ballroom Dancing] just gets more exciting the more you know about it, which is why you have to do well at school so you can spend the rest of your life supporting your habit. Just don't plan to marry anyone who dislikes dancing; it'll probably win in the end!!"

-Kay Teague, Youth College Network Coordinator

"Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room."

-Kurt Vonnegut

"Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels."

-Faith Whittlesey

"Ballet discipline: only the true believer would suffer the rigors it demanded."

"The Ballet toe-shoe is one of the few instruments of torture to survive intact into our time."

"Carpe Dancem (seize the dance!)"

"Dance is not an answer. Dance is a question. "Yes!" is the answer."

"Dance is the perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire."

"Dancing on stage is a lot more than just a pretty coustume, you have to know what you're doing."

"The Feet may learn the Steps but only the Spirit can Dance."

"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."

"I was desperate in those days to do 32 fouettés, right and left. I still thought, in my heart, that somehow it would happen, that I'd become a dancer."

"Lesser dancers stumble, better dancers syncopate."

"Letting go of perfectionism, so ingrained in the nature of a ballet dancer, can be the most difficult thing."

"When the going gets tough, the tough go dancing!"

"You dance from your heart, You dance what you feel, Thats how you know a dancer is real."

"You've got to dance like no one's watching and love like it's never going to hurt."