Dance Quotes - Page 12

• 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

  Cutting, Blood, Jewels

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• Movement has the capacity to take us to the home
  of the soul, the world within for which we have
  no name. Movement reaches our deepest nature,
  and dance creatively expresses it. Through dance,
  we gain new insights into the mystery of our lives.
  When brought forth from the inside and forged by
  the desire to create personal change, dance has the
  profound power to heal the body, psyche and soul.

  Anna Halprin

  Life, Change, Nature

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• It is not so much upon the number of exercises, as the care with which they are done, that progreses and skill depend.

  August Bournonville

  Exercise, Skills, Numbers

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• Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Music, Education, Inspiration

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (2007). “Twilight of the Idols with the Antichrist and Ecce Homo”, p.47, Wordsworth Editions

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• Dance for yourself. If someone understands, good. If not, no matter.

  Louis Horst

  Dancing, Ballet, Matter

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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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• 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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• 

  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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• I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.

  Walt Whitman

  Believe, Men, Midnight

  Walt Whitman (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1860-1867”, p.359, NYU Press

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• In your light I learn how to love.

  Rumi

  Lost Love, Light, Embracing Love

  Rumi (2015). “Selected Poems”, p.166, Penguin UK

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• I think Balanchine and Robbins talk to God and when I call, he's out to lunch.

  Bob Fosse

  Thinking, Lunch, Dancing

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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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• 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

  Heart, Eye, Long

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• But oh, she dances in such a way!
  No sun upon an Easter-day
  Is half so fine a sight.

  John Suckling

  Easter, Sight, Half

  Sir John Suckling (1766). “The Works of Sir John Suckling: Containing His Poems, Letters, and Plays”, p.37

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• 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

  Believe, Thinking, Dancing

  Jane Austen (2007). “The Complete Novels of Jane Austen”, p.929, Wordsworth Editions

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• Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing.

  Martha Graham

  Passion, Dancing, Movement

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

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• The physical language of the body is so much more powerful than words.

  Bill Irwin

  Powerful, Dancing, Ballet

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• 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

  Girl, Eye, Hands

  Herman Melville (1860). “Typee : a peep at polynesian life, during a four months residence in a valley of the Marquesas”, p.179

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• In your beauty, how to make poems.

  Rumi

  Lost Love, Sufi, Sufi Love

  Rumi (2015). “Selected Poems”, p.166, Penguin UK

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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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• 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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