Dance Performance Quotes

• Dance is the hidden langauge of the soul, of the body.

  Martha Graham

  Inspirational, Dance, Art

  "Martha Graham Reflects on Her Art and a Life in Dance". archive.nytimes.com. March 31, 1985.

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

  Martha Graham

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  "The Runner's Book of Daily Inspiration: A Year of Motivation, Revelation, and Instruction". Book by Kevin Nelson, p. 11, 1999.

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• Dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music

  Charles Baudelaire

  Dancing, Merit, Mysterious

  Charles Baudelaire (1986). “La Fanfarlo”

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• 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

  Dance, Light, Dancing

  55 Copy quote

• Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It's a miracle, and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.

  Martha Graham

  Inspirational, Dance, Thinking

  "The Routledge Dance Studies Reader". Book by Alexandra Carter and Janet O'Shea, p. 96, 1998.

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• Then 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

  Dance, Pain, Light

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• Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Dance, Dancing, Ballet

  Charles Baudelaire (2001). “The Prose Poems and La Fanfarlo”, p.22

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• Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Dance, Sexy, Funny Sex

  In New Statesman 23 Mar. 1962

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• Nothing is more revealing than movement.

  Martha Graham

  Dance, Dancing, Movement

  14 Copy quote

• The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Inspirational, Dance, Dancing

  Charles Baudelaire (1986). “La Fanfarlo”

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• 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

  Dance, Ballet, Magic

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Dance, Art, Fall

  Rudolf Arnheim (1966). “Toward a Psychology of Art: Collected Essays”, p.261, Univ of California Press

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• 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 Katherina Langer

  Dance, Play, Space

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• I believe that 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. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. 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

  Dance, Believe, Learning

  "The Routledge Dance Studies Reader". Book by Alexandra Carter and Janet O'Shea, p. 96, 1998.

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• 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

  Dance, Heart, Eye

  27 Copy quote

• Kind are her answers, But her performance keeps no day; Breaks time, as dancers. From their own Music when they stray.

  Thomas Campion

  Dance, Answers, Kind

  'The Third Book of Airs' (1617) no. 7

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• 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

  Inspirational, Motivational, Dance

  60 Copy quote

• Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.

  Martha Graham

  Inspirational, Dance, Heart

  Martha Graham (1991). “Blood memory”, Doubleday

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• Dance every performance as if it were your last.

  Erik Bruhn

  Dance, Dancing, Lasts

  58 Copy quote

• Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.

  Havelock Ellis

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  The Dance of Life ch. 2 (1923)

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• 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

  Inspirational, Dance, Mean

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• 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

  Life, Dance, Education

  Martha Graham (1991). “Blood memory”, Doubleday

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• I believe that we learn by practice... it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which come shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit.

  Martha Graham

  Dance, Believe, Practice

  Martha Graham (1991). “Blood Memory”, Washington Square Press

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• Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

  Martha Graham

  Dance, Volleyball, Mean

  Martha Graham (1991). “Blood memory”, Doubleday

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• Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

  Dave Barry

  Dance, Ballet Class, Dancing

  Dave Barry (1998). “Dave Barry Turns 50”, Crown

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