| Dance Quotes |
Great artists are people who find a way to be themselves in
their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity; in art and
life alike. - Margot Fonteyn
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 of time, this expression is unique. And if you
block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and be
lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to
determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares
with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours
clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even
have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open
and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the
channel open. -Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille
Dance is movement through space with integrity.
The difference between a dance and routine is the former is
directed by a vision, not a time limit.
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
Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the
soul's weather to all who can read it. - Martha Graham
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative
expression and knowledge. - Albert Einstein
Dance is the only art in which we ourselves are the stuff of
which it is made. - Ted Shawn
Dance is the hidden language of the soul. - Martha Graham
It takes an athlete to dance, but an artist to be a dancer. -
Shanna LaFleur
Dance, an Art Form
The Body, an Instrument
Learn To Play The Instrument
So You Can Master The Art Form.
- Debbie Dee.
Learning to dance gives you the greatest freedom of all: to
express with your whole self the person you are. - Melissa Hayden
To touch to move to inspire- this is the true gift of dance. -
Aubrey Lynch
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
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
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
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
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. - Marcia B. Siegel
Dance, one of the oldest forms of artistic expression, requires
only the human body for its realization. - Igor Youskevitch
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. - Antony Tudor
What is expressive in a dance is not the dancer's opinions;
psychological, political, or moral. It isn't even what she thinks
about episodes in her private life. What is expressive in dancing
is the way she moves about the stage, the way she exhibits her
body in motion. - Edwin Denby
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
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
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
Many others have kicked higher,
balanced longer,or turned faster.
These are poor substitutes for passion. - Agnes de Mille
If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in
dancing it. - Isadora Duncan
Dance isn't something that can be explained in words it has to be
danced. - Paige Ardem
I don't want life to imitate art. I want life to be art. - Carrie
Fisher
Any problem in the world can be solved by dancing. - James Brown
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
Dancers are the athletes of God. - Albert Einstein
Work like you don't need the money
Love like you'll never be hurt
And dance like no one is watching
Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to
live forever. - Gandhi
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose
under the heaven.....a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time
to mourn, and a time to dance.....
Dancing is the most lofitiest, most beautiful of all the arts,
not because it is a mere translation or abstraction from life; it
is life itself.
Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how...The
artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we
take leap after leap in the dark. - Agnes deMille
The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word. - Mata Hari
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
Art Is a recognition a realization a substantiality
the form of an expression of one to the qualia core of another
that touches even if only potentially the innermost
where the human one to another conjures an essential trust
where there is a knowing a beholding of life's presence .
When you do dance, I wish you a wave o' the sea, that you might
ever do nothing but that. - William Shakespeare "The Winter's
Tale"
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well
dance with it. - George Bernard Shaw
Cause I'm dancing to the music of the madness in me. - George C.
Wolfe, The Colored Museum
I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could 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 Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1887)
See them dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat; some dance
to remember, some dance to forget. - The Eagles, Hotel California
No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that
others are behind the times. - Martha Graham
Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the
music. - George Carlin
Don't let your head lead. Use your body; don't think too hard.
That's how wars get started, people thinking too hard. Life is
dance, dance is life -- same thing. And we dance until we are
tired, and when we are tired we can't make wars. - Monet Robier (July
1997)
The body is like a jazz band. There is a part that keeps the
rhythm, and the other parts can go wild from there, but the must
all come together at some point. - Monet Robier (July 1997)
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, My
Life (1927)
The work of art is born of the intelligence's refusal to reason
the concrete. It marks the triumph of the carnal. - Albert Camus
Theater takes place all the time, wherever one is, and art simply
facilitates persuading one that this is the case. - John Cage
I must Create a System or be enslav'd by another Man's. I will
not Reason and Compare; my business is to Create. - William Blake
There is the poet to whom the muse dictates his chants, there is
the artist whose hand is guided by an unknown being using him as
an instrument. Their reason cannot impede them, they never
struggle, and their work shows no signs of strain. They are not
divine and can do without their selves. They are like
prolongations of nature, and their works do not pass through the
intellect. - Guillaume Apollinaire, 1905
Aesthetics is for the artists as ornithology is for the birds. -
Barnett Newman
Art is frozen Zen. - R.H. Blyth