Dance Quotes

I've never understood the point of ecstasy. I think if I wanted to get dehydrated and jump about with a load of people I've never met before I could go to a Methodist barn dance.

A good dancer is one who listens to the musicWe dance the music not the steps. Anyone who aspires to dance never thinks about what he is going to do. What he cares about is that he follows the music. You see, we are painters. We paint the music with our feet.

When I miss class for one day, I know it. When I miss class for two days, my teacher knows it. When I miss class for three days, the audience knows it.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

Solo dancing does not exist: the dancer dances with the floor: add another dancer and you have a quartet: each dance with the other and each with the floor.

Learn to dance, so when you get to heaven the angels know what to do with you.

I'm not interested in fame and glory. It's just that I would like others to know what a happy dance this is.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all 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, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

Existence is movement. Action is movement. Existence is defined by the rhythm of forces in natural balance. (...) It is our appreciation for dance that allows us to see clearly the rhythms of nature and to take natural rhythm to a plane of well-organised art and culture.

In Hinduism, Shiva the Cosmic Dancer, is perhaps the most perfect personification of the dynamic universe. Through his dance, Shiva sustains the manifold phenomena in the world, unifying all things by immersing them in his rhythm and making them participate in the dance - a magnificent image of the dynamic unity of the Universe.

Our arms start from the back because they were once wings.

Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

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

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?

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

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

In my ballets, woman is first. Men are consorts. God made men to sing the praises of women. They are not equal to men: They are better.

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

Dancing is my gift and my life... God gave me this gift to bring delight to others. I am haunted by the need to dance. It is the purest expression of every emotion, earthly and spiritual. It is happiness.

The secret of tango is in this moment of improvisation that happens between step and step. It is to make the impossible thing possible: to dance silence.

You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls .

Someone once said that dancers work just as hard as policeman, always alert, always tense. But I don't agree with that because policeman don't have to look beautiful at the same time.

I don't want people who want to dance; I want people who have to dance.

If words were adequate to describe fully what the dance can do, there would be no reason for all the mighty muscular effort, the discomfort, the sweat and the splendors of that art.

There's no thinking involved in my choreography... I don't work through images or ideas. I work through the body... If the dancer dances, which is not the same as having theories about dancing or wishing to dance or trying to dance, everything is there. When I dance, it means: this is what I am doing.

I can destroy a dance floor. I think life should be a musical. I always hate it when people watch a musical and they go, 'Oh, it's so unrealistic, no one just breaks into song in the middle of their day.' Yeah, they do- if they're me.

The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener.

Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays.

All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.

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.' I have never prided myself on having an unusually gifted pupil. A Pavlova is no one's pupil but God's.

He who neither drinks, nor smokes, nor dances, he who preaches & even occasionally practice piety, temperance and celibacy, is generally a saint, or a mahatma or more likely a humbug but he certainly won't make a leader or for that matter a good soldier

The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word.

The real lover is the man who can thrill you by kissing your forehead.

The dance is strong magic. The body can fly without wings. It can sing without voice. The dance is strong magic. The dance is life.

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

Master technique and then forget about it and be natural.

Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul

Dance is music made visible

Do it big, do it right, and do it with style.

The Dance: A minimum of explanation, a minimum of anecdotes - and a maximum of sensations.

The body says what words cannot.

The energy doesn't end at the hands. I want such intensity that it feels like light is streaming from every finger.

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.

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

Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.

Disco is music for dancing, and people will always want to dance.

Why do I dance? Dance is my medicine. It’s the scream which eases for a while the terrible frustration common to all human beings who because of race, creed, or color, are ‘invisible’. Dance is the fist with which I fight the sickening ignorance of prejudice.

We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.

Drawing is not what you see but what you must make others see.