Dancer Quotes - Page 34

• The woman in charge of costuming assigned us our outfits and gave us a lecture on keeping things clean. She held up a calendar and said, "Ladies, you know what this is. Use it. I have scraped enough blood out from the crotches of elf knickers to last me the rest of my life. And don't tell me, 'I don't wear underpants, I'm a dancer.' You're not a dancer. If you were a real dancer you wouldn't be here. You're an elf and you're going to wear panties like an elf.

  David Sedaris

  Real, Blood, Use

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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

  Dance, Believe, Men

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

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• Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.

  Jane Yolen

  Writing, Athlete, Character

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• She didn't even have to smile, and she rarely did outside her house--it was the eyes, her dancer's carriage, the way she seemed to deliberate over the smallest movement of her body.

  Alice Sebold

  Eye, House, Movement

  Alice Sebold (2014). “The Lovely Bones: Picador Classic”, p.64, Pan Macmillan

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• I used to say to my classes that the ways to get insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it; or to have a love affair with an old Russian. And I stopped saying that when a little dancer in the front row put up her hand and said, 'Does he have to be old?

  Margaret Mead

  Religious, Animal, Hands

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• Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer.

  Louise Glück

  Sister, Two, Funny Sibling

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• She didn't see him at first. She was watching the dancers. Her color was high, and there were deep dimples at the corners of her mouth. She looked nine miles out of place, but he had never loved her more. This was Willa on the edge of a smile.

  Stephen King

  Color, Mouths, Dimples

  Stephen King (2008). “Just After Sunset: Stories”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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• People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life.

  Martha Graham

  People, Chosen

  Martha Graham (1991). “Blood Memory”, Washington Square Press

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• You can be Eastern or Burmese or what have you, but the function of the body and the awareness of the body results in dance and you become a dancer, not just a human being.

  Martha Graham

  Body, Awareness, Results

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

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• He stared up at the stars: and it seemed to him then that they were dancers, stately and graceful, performing a dance almost infinite in its complexity.

  Neil Gaiman

  Stars, Infinite, Performing

  Neil Gaiman (2007). “Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess's Stardust: Being a Romance Within the Realms of Faerie”, Vertigo

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• I frowned at the list. “So… I’ll go back and tell the Traynors that I’m going to get their suicidal quadriplegic son drunk, spend their money on strippers and lap dancers, and then trundle him off to the Disability Olympics—

  Jojo Moyes

  Suicidal, Son, Drunk

  Jojo Moyes (2012). “Me Before You: A Novel”, p.140, Penguin

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• Now, 'Dasher!' now, 'Dancer!' now, 'Prancer' and 'Vixen!'
  On, 'Comet!' on, 'Cupid!' on, 'Donner' and 'Blitzen!'

  Clement Clarke Moore

  Christmas, Vixens, Cupid

  Clement Clarke Moore (1973). “The night before Christmas in signed English”, Clerc

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• Real dancers are the ones who can hear the music in their soul.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Dance, Real, Soul

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• When I dance, I love the romance and sexiness of it, and love having it be clear to both dancers that the man leads! But the man has to know what he's doing!

  Susannah McCorkle

  Dance, Men, Romance

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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

  Dance, Passion, Dancing

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

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• 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

  Dance, Years, Dancing

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

  Fred Astaire

  Dance, Learning, Thinking

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• It is this mission of the dancer to contribute to the betterment of all mankind.

  Ruth St. Denis

  Dance, Missions, Mankind

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• To express what is the most moral, healthful and beautiful in art this is the mission of the dancer, and to this I dedicate my life.

  Isadora Duncan

  Beautiful, Dance, Art

  Isadora Duncan (1909). “The Dance”

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• A dancer should learn from all the arts. Go to museums and look at the paintings. See how they balance things. Everything you do in the arts enriches you.

  Alicia Alonso

  Dance, Art, Learning

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• Mannerism is not character, and affectation is the avowed enemy of grace. Every dancer ought to regard his laborious art as a link in the chain of beauty, as a useful ornament for the stage, and this, in turn, as an important element in the spiritual development of nations.

  August Bournonville

  Dance, Spiritual, Art

  August Bournonville (1979). “My theatre life”, Wesleyan

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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

  Dance, Play, Space

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• 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

  Dance, Art, Memories

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• 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

  Dance, Art, Fall

  Rudolf Arnheim (1966). “Toward a Psychology of Art: Collected Essays”, p.261, Univ of California Press

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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, Dance, Integrity

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