Dance Quotes - Page 13

• The one unbreakable rule of couples dancing is that the partners must move inter dependently, as a unit.

  Gerald Jonas

  Couple, Moving, Dancing

  Gerald Jonas (1998). “Dancing: The Pleasure, Power, and Art of Movement”, Turtleback Books

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• Oh, 'tis jesting, dancing, drinking
  Spins the heavy world around.

  A. E. Housman

  Drinking, Dancing, World

  A. E. Housman (2012). “A Shropshire Lad”, p.34, Courier Corporation

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• 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

  Beautiful, Art, Memories

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• 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 Minnelli

  Sports, Baseball, Believe

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• 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

  Mirrors, Practice, Faults

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• There was never a merry world since the fairies left off dancing.

  John Selden

  Dancing, World, Fairy

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• Discourse on virtue and they pass by in droves. Whistle and dance the shimmy, and you've got an audience.

  Diogenes

  Dancing, Virtue, Whistling

  Herakleitos, Diogenes (2011). “Herakleitos and Diogenes: Translated from the Greek by Guy Davenport”, p.56, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• She is your treasure, she must have a husband;
  I must dance bare-foot on her wedding day,
  And, for your love to her, lead apes in hell.

  William Shakespeare

  Husband, Feet, Wedding Day

  'The Taming Of The Shrew' (1592) act 2, sc. 1, l. 32

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• A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet, that the two disciplines were totally separate, and if you did one, you couldn’t do the other. I’m beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.

  Twyla Tharp

  Wall, Thinking, People

  "The High Priestess of Creative Movement". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 25, 1993.

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• 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

  Thinking, Dancing, Done

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• I'm not one who divides music, dance or art into various categories. Either something works, or it doesn't.

  Twyla Tharp

  Inspirational, Art, Categories

  "The High Priestess of Creative Movement". Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 25, 1993.

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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

  Play, Space, Ballet

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• 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

  Men, Thinking, Dancing

  Isadora Duncan (2013). “My Life (Revised and Updated)”, p.131, W. W. Norton & Company

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• 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

  Inspirational, Motivational, Soul

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• 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

  Beautiful, Integrity, Ambition

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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

  Ballet, Magic, Add

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• 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

  Struggle, Passion, Creative

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• Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!

  William Butler Yeats

  Angel, Flames, Wind

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.102, Penguin

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• 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

  Teacher, Ballet Class, Perfection

  "In conversation: Jiri Kylian on the choreographer's art". Interview to Dance Magazine, November 1, 1994.

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• 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

  Inspirational, Teacher, Dancing

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  You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise!

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Maya Angelou (1994). “Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women”, Random House Incorporated

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• A choreographic idea flows only as fast as the initiator can communicate it to bodies and see them realize it.

  Marcia Siegel

  Inspirational, Ideas, Dancing

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• In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Life, Beauty, Beautiful

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• 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 P. Feynman

  Mother, Teaching, Taken

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• Some think that people come to a ball to do nothing but dance; whereas everyone knows that the real business of a ball is to look out for a wife, to look after a wife, or to look after someone else's wife.

  Robert Smith Surtees

  Real, Thinking, Wife

  'Mr Facey Romford's Hounds' (1865) ch. 56

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