Dancing Quotes - Page 39

• Although the circle dance is known throughout the entire world, the front dance is limited to the cultures of which the rectangular hut is a part.

  Curt Sachs

  Dance, Circles, Culture

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• Wherever there are four walls, consciousness of direction is far keener.

  Curt Sachs

  Dance, Wall, Four

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• The dance in which the men form one row, the women another, and dance with and opposite each other in a form of love play, is widely diffused and may be confidentally assigned to a Protoneolithic culture level.

  Curt Sachs

  Dance, Men, Opposites

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• The only information we have about the early history of the dance comes to us from the rock paintings created by primitive man tens of thousands of years ago in what is now France.

  Curt Sachs

  Dance, Men, Rocks

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• Whatever the nature of dance, it needs no onlooker, not even a single witness.

  Curt Sachs

  Dance, Needs, Witness

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• The English dance unites the guests of an evening by the spell of rhythmical movement into a chance casual community.

  Curt Sachs

  Dance, Community, Movement

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• A choral dance: an attempt to impose upon a chance gathering of a few dozen guests a communal feeling.

  Curt Sachs

  Dance, Feelings, Gathering

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• Only the tango has continued to enjoy undiminished favor for more than twenty years in spite of polishing and refinement. To be sure, it is no pure Negro dance and owes its best qualities to the unusual dance talents of the Spaniards.

  Curt Sachs

  Dance, Years, Quality

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• At the root of all the varied manifestations of dancing, lies the common impulse to resort to movement to externalize emotional states which we cannot extemalize by rational means.

  Jamake Highwater

  Dance, Lying, Mean

  "Dance: Rituals of Experience".

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• The story of dance in the Western world is as much an alternative vision of the events of history as is the folk history told for generations by primal people.

  Jamake Highwater

  Dance, People, Vision

  Jamake Highwater (1978). “Dance: rituals of experience”

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• Dance has been transformed from an involuntary motor discharge, a ceremonial rite, into a work of art, conscious of, intended for, observation.

  Jamake Highwater

  Dance, Art, Conscious

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• In the New Hebrides, any dancer making a mistake was assaulted, wounded, and possibly killed by bowmen posted to keep careful watch for inaccuracies in rituals.

  Jamake Highwater

  Dance, Mistake, Watches

  Jamake Highwater (1992). “Dance: Rituals of Experience”, p.39, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The nobility danced for the sake of social grace, to exhibit their finery...peasants danced to make themselves happy, to escape the routine of their life, and to meet their future wives and husbands.

  Jamake Highwater

  Dance, Husband, Wife

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• Some of the most popular discos in America and Europe were started as gay establishments, which began to open their doors to anyone who wanted to dance.

  Jamake Highwater

  Dance, Gay, Doors

  Jamake Highwater (1992). “Dance: Rituals of Experience”, p.56, Oxford University Press, USA

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• White performances were always dull in comparison to the astonishing expressiveness of Black dancers. Behind the white person's inarticulate body were centuries of condemnation of dancing on religious grounds.

  Jamake Highwater

  Dance, Religious, White

  Jamake Highwater (1992). “Dance: Rituals of Experience”, p.61, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Dance in this century has remained primarily a personal ritual operating, like most avant-garde art, as an idiosyncratic form rather than a tribal expression of religious powers or a corporate expression of societal values.

  Jamake Highwater

  Dance, Religious, Art

  Jamake Highwater (1992). “Dance: Rituals of Experience”, p.103, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The basic vehicle of the dance is the human body. When and how people dance is determined by their attitudes towards their body.

  Gerald Jonas

  Dance, Attitude, People

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• The circle, or ring, dance was seen as an earthly counterpart of the heavenly dance of the angels, which was itself a celebration of the resurrection.

  Gerald Jonas

  Dance, Angel, Circles

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

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• Writing, not dancing, is the chosen form of expression of the white man.

  Gerald Jonas

  Dance, Writing, Men

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

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• Dance, which displays the body in public, is one of the channels of communication used to pass along important social skills from one generation to the next.

  Gerald Jonas

  Dance, Communication, Skills

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

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• In many parts of the world-including Polynesia, north Africa & the Middle East-public dancing that focused on a physically linked couple would have been unthinkable, a violation of communal propriety.

  Gerald Jonas

  Dance, Couple, Middle East

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

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

  Gerald Jonas

  Dance, Couple, Moving

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

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• By dancing in a socially approved way with their peers, individiuals proclaim their allegiance to society as a whole.

  Gerald Jonas

  Dance, Peers, Way

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• A physician who treated mental cases says that he based his diagnosis on the way his patients moved: "The body never lies" was his maxim.

  Gerald Jonas

  Dance, Lying, Physicians

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• If you have a voice, sing; but if you have good arms, then go in for dancing.

  Ovid

  Dance, Voice, Arms

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