Dance Quotes 2

I think most dancers would agree that the art of ballet chooses the dancer, not the other way around.
-Kevin McKenzie-

Beginning dancer. Knows nothing.
Intermediate dancer. Knows everything. Too good to dance with beginners. Hotshot dancer. Too good to dance with anyone.
Advanced dancer. Dances everything. Especially with beginners.
-Unknown-

Dancing is the poetry of the foot.
-John Dryden-

Dance is bigger than the physical body. Think bigger than that. When you extend your arm, it doesn't stop at the end of your fingers, because you're dancing bigger than that: your dancing spirit.
-Judith Jamison-

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence.
-Samuel Johnson-

Ballet is not just movement, not simply abstract. It’s something beautiful. Sometimes there’s this feeling in the movement that makes me want to cry.
-Nina Ananiashvili, The Ballet Book-

Fine dancing, I believe like virtue, must be its own reward. Those who are standing by are usually thinking of something very different.
-Jane Austen-

A dance is a measured pace, as a verse is a measured speech.
-Francis Bacon-

The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.
-George Balanchine-

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. It is matter, graceful and terrible, animated and embellished by movement.
-Charles Baudelaire-

There are shortcuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.
-Vicki Baum-

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-

Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals.
-Charles Baudelaire-

Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order.
-Samuel Beckett-

Try everything once except incest and folk dancing.
-Sir Thomas Beecham-

Ballet is not technique but a way of expression that comes more closely to the inner language of man than any other.
-George Borodin-

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-

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

So, I think I would say, enjoy the process of learning to dance. The process of our profession, and not its final achievement, is the heart and soul of dance.
-Jacques d'Amboise-

When someone blunders, we say that he makes a misstep. Is it then not clear that All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill our history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill in dancing.
-Moliere-

I had to learn that slower is faster If you practice every day with patience and correctness, you will get there. It's like preparing for a jump. You can't rush. You must summon the appropriate energy with split-second timing and have an understanding of purpose to get up in the air. It requires training, confidence and mental effort. You can't have a vocabulary without the alphabet. Balanchine used to say, “Do you want to be a poet of gesture or do you want to be a physical entity?" 
Edward Villella- Masters of Movement

Dance is the art form; the body is the instrument. Learn to play the instrument so you can master the art form.
-Debbie Dee-

Birds use their wings to fly, because they do not know how to dance. 
-Zeynep Okcu-

When movement becomes ecstatic, then this is dance. When the movement is so total there is no ego, then it is dance. 
-Osho-

No one can arrive from being talented alone. God gives talent; work transforms talent into genius. 
-Anna Pavlova-

Anna Pavlova was looking at her swan costume as she was dying. Her final words: “Get my swan costume ready.” 
-Anna Pavlova-

Sometimes I have conflicting emotions because it's been going on for so long now, but then I see somebody dancing real well and it just comes back like an old love. The flame ignites again. 
-Ann Reinking-

Learn to dance, otherwise the angels in heaven won't know what to do with you.
-St. Augustine-

Each time a dancer moves devoutly or a composer faithfully searches the silence for the veiled melodies, eternity is engaged.
-Maya Angelou-

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

Dancing is like bank robbery, it takes split-second timing.
-Twyla Tharp-

The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
-Agnes de Mille-

When you go to dance, take heed whom you take by the hand.
-John Clarke-

All the gestures of children are graceful; the reign of distortion and unnatural attitudes commences with the introduction of the dancing master. 
-Sir Joshua Reynolds-

Even today when I rehearse, I give it everything that I’ve got. If I’m in a performance and the lights go out—I glow in the dark. When you’re working before an audience, you have to make them feel like they can touch you. That’s the dancer within, reaching out. 
Mitzi Gaynor- The Dancer Within

You get obsessed by dancing because there seems to be no choice. Sometimes you are miserable, sometimes you are floating in elation. But you can't leave it alone until the passion is spun out. If you are lucky you try not to hate it when you leave. 
-Lisa Rinehart-

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-

You’re never more of an individual than when you’re a happy team player.
-Suzanne Farrell-

Do not brood. It makes the moment you are living in unavailable for learning and life.
-Suzanne Farrell-

Treat each class as if it were your first.
-Suzanne Farrell-

I set as my goal to be the best dancer I could be. Not the most famous, or the highest paid dancer, just the best I could be. Out of this discipline came great freedom and calm.
-Suzanne Farrell-

When you are on stage in front of an audience, you want to engage the entire crowd. If a thousand people are in the theater, you need to dance a thousand different ways, not one-thousandth of a way.
-Suzanne Farrell-

It is not a question of who dances but of who or what does not dance. 
-Ruth St. Denis-

We should realize in a vivid and revolutionary sense that we are not in our bodies but our bodies are in us. 
-Ruth St. Denis-

There was never a merry world since the fairies left off dancing. 
-John Selden-

Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made. 
-Ted Shawn-

Success comes from having a fulfilling experience and being inside the moment of that experience. Success does not come in retrospect or as a recollection or even as an evaluation from others. lt's not something that you can physically hold onto or repeat at will. Only when you acknowledge the special moments can you truly feel the effects of your most wonderful achievements. 
-Tommy Tune- Masters of Movement

Classical language and musicality are not simply effete traditions belonging to the bygone upper classes. The vocabulary and manner of classical ballet express a high order of discipline and restraint, a sense of harmony with forces larger and more lasting than the individual. 
-Marsha B. Siegel-

A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I'm beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things. 
-Twyla Tharp-

I think that probably the moments of discovery do come from a place that is not totally organized. Order is something that we already know about. Discoveries are in a place we don't already know about. 
-Twyla Tharp-

I would have to challenge the term, modern dance. I don't really use that term in relation to my work. I simply think of it as dancing. I think of it as moving. 
-Twyla Tharp-

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

It's extremely arrogant and foolish to think you can ever outwit your audience. 
-Twyla Tharp-

The only thing I fear more than change is no change. 
-Twyla Tharp-

This is not a pleasant route for many young people to consider. You have to be either hopelessly passionate, or very stupid. 
-Twyla Tharp-

A brand-new pair of toe shoes presents itself to us as an enemy with a will of its own that must be tamed. 
-Toni Bentley-

A toe shoe is an eccentric as the ballerina who wears it: their marriage is a commitment. 
-Toni Bentley-

Ballet technique is arbitrary and very difficult. It never becomes easy; it becomes possible. 
-Agnes De Mille-

Ballet's image of perfection is fashioned amid a milieu of wracked bodies, fevered imaginations, Balkan intrigue and sulfurous hatreds where anything is likely, and dancers know it. 
-Shana Alexander-

Dancing is like bank robbery, it takes split-second timing. 
-Twyla Tharp-

If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point dancing it. 
-Isadora Duncan-

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

People come to see beauty, and I dance to give it to them. 
-Judith Jamison-

On the plié and rélevé is based the whole structure of the classical ballet. 
-Christian Johansson- Principal teacher at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence. 
-Samuel Johnson-

The body is the source of amazing energy. This thing wants to live. It is a powerful engine. The brain (is) a reservoir of images, dreams, fears, associations, language. And its potential we can't even begin to understand. Movement begins to negotiate the distance between the brain and the body and it can be surprising what we learn about each other. 
-Bill T. Jones-

A weak first step transmits nothing. 
-Mai Kishikawa-

A dance performance is rather like going out into a battlefield. You have to hold the attention of as many as five to 10,000 people a lot of whom do not follow your language. 
-Yamini Krishnamurthy-

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! 
-Ji?í Kylián-

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 K. Langer-

When one lifts a ballerina, it is not her weight but her nature that causes the problem. 
-Maris Liepa-

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-

Dance has to unfold with the grace of a tree giving out leaves, flowers and then tiny fruit. Nothing so beautiful can be done in haste. 
-Pt. Birju Maharaj-

Even the ears must dance. 
-Natalya Makarova-

The expression should come from within oneself, conveying the spiritual –something between earth and heaven. And if one runs, one should not seem to touch the ground. 
-Natalya Makarova-

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-

Poetry is like dancing. Not all of us can be ballet dancers, but all of us dance. Everyone has a poet inside of him struggling to get out. 
-Marks and Spencer-

If you dance with your heart your body will follow. 
-Mia Michaels-

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-

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music. 
-Angela Monet-

The dance, more than any other art, lives through the genius of its interpreters. 
-Lillian Moore-

Hold your hands out gently. Ask others to do the same. See how different each person looks. Each person has their own unique and natural beauty. Use this natural beauty when you dance. Respect your individuality. 
-Artemis Mourat-

Ballet is a dance executed by the human soul. 
-Alexander Pushkin-

No artist is ahead of his time. He is time; the others are just behind the times. 
-Martha Graham-

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-

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. 
-Anthony Tudor-

If I see a human body on the stage, I don't see it as an abstraction. I see it as a body. 
-Anthony Tudor-

Dance is like wine it matures with every performance. 
-Alarmel Valli-

Dancing is an art because it is subject to rules. 
-Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire-

Dance helps us dream bigger dreams and understand our connectedness. When we close our eyes and dream, we are all brothers. 
-Russell Clark- Masters of Movement

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance? 
-William Butler Yeats

On dancing on pointe:
Why don't they just get taller girls? 
-Henny Youngman-

A day I don't dance is a day I don't live. 
-Anonymous-

All that music and only two feet. 
-Anonymous-

Dance to express, not to impress. 
-Anonymous-

Dancers offer us our only earthly chance to catch a glimpse of the angelic host. 
-Anonymous-

Dancing is like life: it's good to have a plan, but be prepared to improvise. 
-Anonymous-

In swing, whatever works is right. 
-Anonymous-

Seen from the wings, a ballerina's life is made-up of sheer physical misery relieved only by the euphoria of performance. Physical agony is a normal thing backstage and arouses the awe and pity only of outsiders unused to its sight. 
-Anonymous-

There are never mistakes, just unexpected solos. 
-Anonymous-

We dancers are very lonely people. We work together but we are very much self-made, self-centered individuals. 
-Anonymous-

We do not always dance because we are happy, but we dance and cannot help but become happy. 
-Anonymous-

You can dance perfectly, but you will be never an artist if you dance without your soul. {Tu peux danser parfaitement, mais tu ne sera jamais artiste si tu ne danses pas avec ton âme.} 
-Anonymous-

In couple dances, gentlemen, hold onto her like you like her. 
-Richard Duree-

In eroticism as dance: one of the partners is always charged with leading the other. {Il en va de l'érotisme comme de la danse: l'un des partenaires se charge toujours de conduire l'autre.} 
-Milan Kundera-

In the pivotal moves of the dance, those in which the dance partners exchange leadership, the power of the dance can be seen to alternate as quickly as that of sweat-slick wrestlers or fate-heavy duelists. Dominance is always fragile and unsure; subjugation is merely quiescence in which to plot the regaining of the upper hand. Thus, energies of ego and control struggle in a psychomania in three dimensions on the dance floor. 
-Richard Martin-

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-

It always takes two. There’s the speaker and the listener, you and the audience. You’ve worked long hours and it comes down to that moment, that performance. The goal isn’t just to improve yourself, but to transport people.
-Gillian Murphy, The Ballet Book-

You don't have to know about ballet to enjoy it, all you have to do is look at it.
-Edwin Denby-

Dancing: The highest intelligence in the freest body.
-Isadora Duncan-

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-

If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.
-Isadora Duncan-

The following hints on ballroom etiquette may be of use to persons unacquainted with dancing, or who have not been accustomed to attending balls with ladies:
• It is improper for two gentlemen to dance together when ladies are present.
• While dancing, a lady should consider herself engaged to her partner, and therefore she is not at liberty to hold a flirtation, between figures, with another gentleman.
• If you cannot waltz gracefully, do not attempt to waltz at all.
• In waltzing, a gentleman should exercise the utmost delicacy in touching the waist of his partner.
• When a young lady declines dancing with a gentleman, it is her duty to give him a reason no matter how frivolous the excuse may be.
• If a lady refuses to dance with you, bear the refusal with grace; and if you perceive her afterwards dancing with another, seem not to notice it.
-Thomas Hillgrove's A Complete Practical Guide to the Art of Dancing, Dick & Fitzgerald, New York, 1864-

There are three steps you have to complete to become a professional dancer: learn to dance, learn to perform, and learn how to cope with injuries.
-D. Gere-

Technical perfection is insufficient. It is an orphan without the true soul of the dancer.
-Sylvie Guillem-

Dance is the loftiest, most moving, most beautiful of the arts, because it is not a mere translation or abstraction of life; it is life itself!
-Martha Graham-

Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery.
-Martha Graham-

It takes ten years, usually, to make a dancer. It takes ten years of handling the instrument, handling the material with which you are dealing, for you to know it completely.
-Martha Graham-

Bravura has nothing to do with technique. It’s all about timing and oozing life.
-Kevin McKenzie, The Ballet Book-

The noble entitlement bespeaks an élan, a certain type of relationship with your partner. It means formidable technique not displayed lightly. The excitement comes from elegance.
-Kevin McKenzie, The Ballet Book-

Learning to walk sets you free. Learning to dance gives you the greatest freedom of all: to express your whole self, the person you are.
-Melissa Hayden-

He who cannot dance puts the blame on the floor.
-Hindu proverb-

It takes an athlete to dance, but an artist to be a dancer.
-Shanna LaFleur-

Even the ears must dance.
-Natalie Makarova-

The Marquesan girls dance all over; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads.
-Herman Melville-

Technique--bodily control--must be mastered only because the body must not stand in the way of the soul's expression.
-La Meri-

The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie.
-Agnes de Mille-

Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
-Agnes de Mille-

Master technique and then forget about it and be natural.
-Anna Pavlova-

Everyday there must be something I can't do, otherwise it's boring.
-Maret Robier-

To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.
-Jack Handey-

Dance every performance as if it were your last. 
-Erik Bruhn-

Don't be afraid to be amazing. 
-Andy Offutt Irwin-

Great artists are people who find ways to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike. 
-Margot Fonteyn-

I have performed for thousands when they found me exotic, the vogue, daring, but I have danced, at any given time, for about ten people.... They were the ones that left the theater forever different from the way they were when they came in. All of my long, long life, I have danced for those ten. 
-Ruth St. Denis-

One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self- confidence is preparation. 
-Arthur Ashe-

Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor. 
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.-

The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have. 
-Norman Vincent Peale-

To dance, put your hand on your heart and listen to the sound of your soul. 
-Luigi-

Dance, in its broadest sense, is a physical acknowledgment of the rhythm of the universe and of our own lives. 
-Carol Roan-

Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully, and with inevitability. Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made. Dancing is like dreaming with your feet! 
-Constanze-

To sing well and to dance is to be well educated. 
-Plato-

Without dance I cannot feel my soul, hear my heart, or see my dreams. 
-Nahara-

And when they ask you, ‘what is your church?’ you say, ‘I dance.’ 
-anonymous-

Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain. 
-Anonymous-

I just know that when I go on stage, I give everything I have, not only my legs, not only my feet, not only my body. I try to tell a story. Sometimes I'm able to cry because I feel like it. Sometimes I'm able to love because I feel like it. 
-Sylvie Gulliem-

I use dancing to embellish, extend or enlarge upon an existing emotion. 
-Gower Champion-

It is not the movements that make a dance beautiful, it is the emotions that inspired the movement that make it beautiful. 
-Kristy Nilsson-

Musicality is when the dancers' movements appear to create the music - and not the other way around. 
-Kristy Nilsson-

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-

Great art is never perfect; perfect art is never great. 
-Edward Abbey-

If I had listened to the critics I'd have died drunk in the gutter. 
-Chekov-

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. 
-Eleanor Roosevelt-

The fear is worse than the pain. 
-Shannon Bahr-

When we give ourselves over completely to the spirit of the dance, it becomes a prayer. 
-Gabrielle Roth-

When you take dancing lessons, you learn steps and you learn steps and you learn steps. It can go on for a long time. And then one day, you just learn to dance, and it is so different. 
-Bill Austin-

Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God. 
-Anonymous-

A mistake is simply another way of doing things. 
-Katherine Graham-

Accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory. 
-Anonymous-

Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. 
-Scott Adams-

Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.
-Charles Baudelaire-

Ballet technique is arbitrary and very difficult. It never becomes easy—it becomes possible.
-Agnes de Mille-

So many dancers feel that what they look like is more important than who they are. This is a real danger for dancers who focus for years on appearances and think of themselves as merely a body. The choreographer can’t work with them in the realm of ideas. It’s a huge problem if they haven’t been connecting internally. If they’ve decided that what’s inside is of little value, they can only try to approximate some kind of look. 
-Alonzo King- Masters of Movement

The mother of the dance is the melody because she gives you everything, tells you everything you need to know, like a mother. The father of the dance is the rhythm and he is the strong one, the leader, the authority ? as a father should be! 
-Tayyar Akdeniz-

Dance is for everybody. I believe that the dance came from the people and that it should always be delivered back to the people. 
-Alvin Ailey-

It’s true of all great artists that the more you see, the more you want to see. 
-Peter Anastos-

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-

Dancing allows me to explore myself in so many ways, to learn about my limitations and strengths, my ability to cope with adversity and to go farther than I thought I could. You find out what you're made of. 
-Andrew Asnes-

Dancing is a sweat job. 
-Fred Astaire-

Do it big, do it right, and do it with style. 
-Fred Astaire-

If the dance is right, there shouldn't be a single superfluous movement. 
-Fred Astaire-

Some people seem to think that good dancers are born, but all the good dancers I have known are taught or trained. 
-Fred Astaire-

The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style. 
-Fred Astaire-

This search for what you want is like tracking something that doesn't want to be tracked. It takes time to get a dance right, to create something memorable. 
-Fred Astaire-

I praise the dance, for it frees people from the heaviness of matter and binds the isolated to community. I praise the dance, which demands everything: health and a clear spirit and a buoyant soul. Dance is a transformation of space, of time, of people, who are in constant danger of becoming all brain, will, or feeling. Dancing demands a whole person, one who is firmly anchored in the center of his life, who is not obsessed by lust for people and things and the demon of isolation in his own ego. Dancing demands a freed person, one who vibrates with the equipoise of all his powers. I praise the dance. O man, learn to dance, or else the angels in heaven will not know what to do with you. 
-Saint Augustine-

The heart of the dance is the heart of the dancer. 
-Ghazallah al-Badriyyah-

Ballet dancing is arduous, strenuous activity. Students are engaged in physical training that rivals the training Olympic athletes undergo. At the same time, they strive for physical perfection not for the prowess alone but as a way of achieving the means necessary to express the pure nature of their art. 
-George Balanchine-

Ballet is important and significant – yes. But first of all, it is a pleasure. 
-George Balanchine-

Choreography is simpler than you think. Just go and do, and don't think so much about it. Just make something interesting. 
-George Balanchine-

God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it-from what I see, from what the dancers do, from what others do….
-George Balanchine-

I am a cloud – in trousers. 
-George Balanchine-

I could never make a ballet by wrinkling my brow and concentrating. If you set out deliberately to make a masterpiece, how will you ever get it finished. 
-George Balanchine-

It's like the time capsule with everything in it. Or like the seed that when you plant it, becomes the enormous tree with leaves and fruit. Everybody was in that little seed, and so everything can open. The tree of dance is like that. It just takes a long, long time to blossom. 
-George Balanchine-

Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned. 
-George Balanchine-

My muse must come to me on union time. 
-George Balanchine-

Put a man and a girl on stage and there is already a story; a man and two girls, there's already a plot. 
-George Balanchine-

The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they reach the audience through the eye. It's the illusion created which convinces the audience, much as it is with the work of a magician. 
-George Balanchine-

You haven't got anything to dance about until you're over thirty-five anyway. 
-Bert Balladine-

Technique is what you need to do to dance well, principally to make it feel good to your partner. Style is everything else you do when you dance, hopefully to make it look good to your partner, and your audience. 
-David Barker-

Be guided. Face what you don't know and allow those who do to help you reach your full artistic potential. There are no great talents out there who are fully evolved and developed without understanding the history, tradition, philosophy, behaviors, and relationships pertaining to their particular artistic expression You can't just rely on the audience loving you because you do wonderful tours In the air That's great, really great, but all of that has to be networked with all the other aspects of the art form. So often we have brilliant talents who show us their brilliance but never achieve the artistry.
-Edward Villella- Masters of Movement

Love is the key to success. You can call it different things, and get technical about it, but that's what it comes down to. Love is the most powerful source from which all creativity grows People often believe that it's angst or torment that inspires creative work, but for me it's love. I try to infuse my work with this magical ingredient, and when I do, everything is taken care of. Success comes when the intention to serve what you love and feel passionate about is realized. You may not become financially successful or publicly celebrated, but that is not always the true measure of success. For example, the short-order cook who makes a perfect scrambled egg because of the care he's invested is a success. I feel like I'm doing what I was put here to do. When you find something that you love to do and people love to see you do it, that's the happiest that a man can be. What makes me feel successful is using the gifts that have been bestowed upon me and giving them back In the form of entertainment. 
-Tommy Tune- Masters of Movement

I was always hanging around, trying to imitate the dancers. One day I was in the rehearsal room with Cyd Charisse when she stopped cold and yelled, “She has to sit down. She’s driving me crazy.” “I’m sorry Cyd,” I said, and sat down quietly. But then I thought to myself, how am I going to learn this? I watched her and counted. At the break I’d run into another room and practice. Then I’d run back and learn the rest of it. So I learned at a very young age how to pick up steps. This gave me a great advantage later on. I could learn choreography very quickly. And I did something else. I’d watch the choreographer’s face. I realized that if you watched his face, you got the reason, the intention, the answer to why he was doing the steps. 
-Liza Minnelli- The Dancer Within

One can be a great artist without being a great technician. There have been many famous ballet stars who did not have the ideal body or total mastery of all aspects of the art form, but on the stage they possessed magnetism—true artistry, by which I mean a charismatic quality. You can work with a coach to try and develop it, but a true artist has the ability to express his inner feelings naturally. 
-Fernando Bujones- The Dancer Within

Dance has become an exclusionary enterprise. To participate, one must be thinner than thin, of pleasing form, flexible, athletic and young. If you are not all these things, you will be allowed to dance in the privacy of your own living room. You just wouldn't dare to put yourself onstage. 
-Clive Barnes-

No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business. 
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure. 
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-

The problem is not making up the steps but deciding which ones to keep. 
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-

There comes a moment in a young artist's life when he know she has to bring something to the stage from within himself. He has to put in something in order to be able to take something. 
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-

Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals. 
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-

Even when she walks one would believe that she dances. 
-Charles Baudelaire-

I consider myself an actress first, a dancer second, and a singer third. Why? Because the dancer needs a reason to move—that’s the actor informing the dancer. So I worked on my acting and gradually developed a singing voice. 
-Liza Minnelli- The Dancer Within

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

Dance is something that you do—not something you talk about. It’s abstract and emotional. Art comes from a private, hidden, never fully understood place. You lose yourself in it. You become one with the music; it’s godlike; it’s spiritual. To talk about it is to trespass in a restricted zone. 
-Donna McKenzie- The Dancer Within

Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order. 
-Samuel Beckett-

There are those who dance to the rhythm that is played to them, those who only dance to their own rhythm, and those who don't dance at all. 
-José Bergamín-

God respects us when we work, but he loves us when we dance. 
-Les Blanc-

It is not so much upon the number of exercises, as the care with which they are done, that progress and skill depend. 
-August Bournonville-

Love is a lot like dancing; you just surrender to the music. 
-Pierce Brosnan-

I learned to act by watching Martha Graham dance, and I learned to dance by watching Charlie Chaplin act. 
-Louise Brooks-

Movement without meaning is just exercise. 
-Marie Brooks-

Style is an afterthought, not something that is preconceived. If I’m digging for diamonds in a mine, the maze that I’ve dug, which might look interesting, is just an aftereffect of all the digging, nothing more. The Buddhists say, “Look.” But we get hung up staring at the finger instead of where it’s pointing. 
-Alonzo King- Masters of Movement

So if the dance is five minutes long, make yourself run for perhaps eight minutes. That way, you over-train and the dance will seem easier... 
-Deborah Bull-

It's not magic! It's physics. The speed of the turn is what keeps you upright. 
-Deborah Bull-

Young dancers are training at a very vulnerable time in their lives... So train the whole person, not just the dancer. 
-Deborah Bull-

In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves. 
-Edward Bulwer-Lytton-

Our profession creates illusions. It is not a matter of having a perfect body, but of dancing in such a way as to look perfect. 
-Wilheim Burmann-

Classical dancing is like being a mother: if you've never done it, you can't imagine how hard it is. 
-Harriet Cavalli-

The really great dancer is perhaps a rarer phenomenon than great musicians, painters or sculptors. This is because dance is a consummation of all these arts. The dancer, in addition to the qualities that pure dance demands, must be sensitive to and have an uncanny ear for music, must have a painter’s sensibility to the significant line, a sculptor’s approach to form, an architect’s vision of spaceand a trained actor’s responses to dramatic situations. 
-K. Subhas Chandran-

If their feet aren't in the right place, at least their hearts are. 
-Christian M. Chensvold-

Fantasy is a reality you can dance to. 
-Richard Cohen-

Ballet is only good when it is great. 
-Arlene Croce-

It is through strength of technique that the body stays in possession of music. 
-Arlene Croce-

Dance is music made visible.
-George Balanchine-

If anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away.
-Maria Tallchief-

When you are on stage you don’t see faces. The lights are in your eyes and you see just this black void out in front of you. And yet you know there is life out there, and you have to get your message across. 
-Suzanne Farrell-

Technique is what you fall back on when you run out of inspiration.
-Rudolf Nureyev-

We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.
-Japanese Proverb-

Dancing is like breathing--missing a day doing either is very bad. 
-Vera Ellen-

Cheerleaders are dancers gone retarded. 
-Bring it On-

Dancers have a very hard job. We must take our ugly, callused, blistered, and bruised feet and present them in a way so that they are mistaken as the most beautiful things on Earth. 
-Anonymous-

That which cannot be spoken can be sung; that which cannot be sung can be danced. 
-French proverb-

Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays. 
-George Balanchine-

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-

Dancers work and live from the inside. They drive themselves constantly producing a glow that lights not only themselves but audience after audience. 
-M. Louis-

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

There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good. 
-Edwin Denby-

Please send me your last pair of shoes, worn out with dancing as you mentioned in your letter, so that I might have something to press against my heart. 
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-

Ballet is the one form of theater where nobody speaks a foolish word all evening, nobody on the stage at least. 
-Edwin Denby-

Most people think of ballet as children in little tutus. They don't know it is sweat, blood and tears as well! 
-Nan Keating-

Ballet class is like Life Lessons 101. You learn some of life's most important lessons here that you will carry with you forever. 
-Joanne H. Morscher-

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

There are two basic elements to classical ballet. They are quality and quantity. Quantity is how much a dancer can physically do…the element that gives an artist the freedom to concentrate on quality, while quality is how he or she does it…quality of movement…the most difficult phase… requires long and arduous training. 
-Igor Schwezoff-

What's so wonderful about ballet is that it's mind-driven physicality. It's almost a Greek ideal of body, mind, and form. 
-Edward Villella-

Common sense would tell parents never to send their children to a ballet school. Common sense would tell teenagers that there is a wider and happier world beyond the grueling strictures of daily barre and class. Common sense would tell the graduating student that there are infinitely superior ways of making money than joining a professional ballet company. Common sense would tell a young dancer that very few (laughably few) of his or her colleagues will ever make it to the top or even near the top. Yet... there remains the dance and the dancer. 
-Author Unknown-

If it were not for dreams there would not be such a thing as ballet, the cruelest of the performing arts. 
-Author Unknown-

Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape. 
-W. H. Auden-

To dance is to reach for a word that doesn’t exist,
To sing the heartsong of a thousand generations,
To feel the meaning of a moment in time. 
-Beth Jones-

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts. For it is no mere translation or abstraction of life. It is life itself. 
-Henry Havelock Ellis-

To touch, to move, to inspire. This is the true gift of dance. 
-Aubrey Lynch-

Dance isn't something that can be explained in words. It has to be danced. 
-Paige Arden-

People tend to look at dancers like we are these little jewels, little cardboard cut-outs, and yet we have blood and guts and go through Hell. 
-Susan Jaffe-

The trained dancer must not only have grace and elegance, but also the leap of an Olympic hurdler, the balance of a tight-rope walker and panther-like strength and agility. 
-Camilla Jessel-

You have to think big to be big. 
-Claude M. Bristol-

We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same. 
-Carlos Castaneda-

It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you are. 
-Author Unknown-

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to be over, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain. 
-Author Unknown-

The journey between who you once were, and who you are now becoming, is where the dance of life really takes place. 
-Barbara De Angelis-

Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men. 
-Martha Graham-

Dancing faces you towards Heaven, whichever direction you turn. 
-Sweetpea Tyler-

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

You know you're dancing when tears of
pain and happiness blend in with your sweat. 
-Anonymous-

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-

To learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. 
-Martha Graham-

Quitters never win and winners never quit. 
-Anonymous-

You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled, then something has been lost. 
-Martha Graham-

Try to be fearless, because fear can inhibit you and keep you from a life. 
-Miranda Weese-

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-

Behind each victory is a long train of suffering! 
-Anonymous-

He who dances without leading is merely making the girl mad. 
-Anonymous-

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. 
-Edgar Degas-

Football isn't a contact sport; it's a collision sport.
Dancing is a contact sport. 
-Vince Lombardi-

Dancing's just a conversation between two people.
Talk to me. 
-Steven Rogers-

Talk about dance? Dance is not something to talk about. Dance is to dance. 
-Peter Saint James-

To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak. 
-Hopi Indian Saying-

They who love dancing too much seem to have more brains in their feet than in their head. 
-Anonymous-

Dance is a delicate balance between perfection and beauty. 
-Anonymous-

Dancing appears glamorous, easy, delightful. But the path to paradise of the achievement is not easier than any other. There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep. There are times of complete frustration, there are daily small deaths. 
-Martha Graham-

All I ever needed was the music and the mirror. 
-A Chorus Line-

Everything is beautiful at the ballet. 
-A Chorus Line-

Those move easiest who have learned to dance. 
-Alexander Pope-

The physical language of the body is so much more powerful than words. 
-Bill Irwin-

Many of the simplest exercises become harder in the center. 
-Camilla Jessel-

Dancing is a very living art. It is essentially of the moment, although a very old art. A dancer’s art is lived while he is dancing. Nothing is left of his art except the pictures and the memories--when his dancing days are over. 
-Martha Graham-

Nothing so clearly and inevitably reveals the inner man than movement and gesture. It is quite possible, if one chooses, to conceal and dissimulate behind words or paintings or statues or other forms of human expression, but the moment you move you stand revealed, for good or ill, for what you are. 
-Doris Humphrey-

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-

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-

So many dancers leave me untouched, unmoved. A dancer should be able to raise an arm and make someone cry, in the way Isadora Duncan did. It is a necessity for any art to move you. 
-Pauline Koner-

Dancing should look easy; like an optical illusion. It should seem effortless. When you do a difficult variation, the audience is aware that it is demanding and that you have the power and strength to do it. But in the end, when you take your bow, you should look as if you were saying, ‘Oh, it was nothing. I could do it again.’ 
-Bruce Marks-

One is born to be a dancer. No teacher can work miracles, nor will years of training make a good dancer of an untalented pupil. One may be able to acquire a certain technical facility, but no one can ever ‘acquire an exceptional talent.'
-George Balanchine-

The choreographic process is exhausting. It happens on one's feet after hours of work, and the energy required is roughly the equivalent of writing a novel and winning a tennis match simultaneously. 
-Agnes de Mille-

It's not the turning that’s hard in pirouettes. It's that you’ve got to keep on doing it. 
-Anonymous-

Bleeding feet will bond us. 
-Liza Minelli-

You don't stop dancing from growing old. You grow old from stopping to dance. 
-Anonymous-

First comes the sweat. Then comes the beauty if you're very lucky and have said your prayers. 
-George Balanchine-

Dance is so important in the world. It needs no language. Our bodies speak a language of its own. 
-Ibrahim Farrah-

When the music and dance create with accord...their magic captivates both the heart and the mind. 
-Jean Georges Noverre-

Dancing is silent poetry. 
-Simonides-

Dance from your heart and love your music, and the audience will love you in return.
-Maria Tallchief-

You can't expect the audience to give you its attention. You have to grab it. 
-Anonymous-

You either do the pirouette or you shoot yourself - one way or the other something must happen! 
-Anonymous-

Only angels and ballerinas dance on their toes.
-David Ira Rottenberg-

Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience.
-Victoria Holt-

It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you don't stop.
-Confucius-

One can go a long way after one is tired.
-French proverb-

It isn't hard to be good from time to time....What's hard is being good every day.
-Willie Mays-

A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?
-Robert Browning-

The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible. 
-Arthur C. Clarke-

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit. 
-Aristotle-

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall. 
-Confucius-

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. 
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-

They can because they think they can. 
-Virgil-