Dance Quotes
“In life as in dance: Grace glides on blistered feet.”
—Alice Abrams
“Dance isn’t something that can be explained in words; it has to be danced.”
—Paige Arden
“Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances.”
—Maya Angelou
“I have no desire to prove anything by dancing. I have never used it as an outlet or a means of expressing myself. I just dance. I just put my feet in the air and move them around.”
—Fred Astaire
“I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.”
—Margaret Atwood in “Lady Oracle”
“Dance till the stars come down from the rafters. Dance, Dance, Dance till you drop.”
—W. H. Auden
“All the dancer’s gestures are signs of things, and the dance called rational, because it aptly signifies and displays something over and above the pleasure of the senses.”
—St. Augustine
“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.”
—Sir Francis Bacon
“Dance is music made visible.”
—George Balanchine
“First comes the sweat. Then comes the beauty if you’re very lucky and have said your prayers.”
—George Balanchine
“Someone once said that dancers work just as hard as policemen, always alert, always tense, but see, policemen don’t have to be beautiful at the same time.”
—George Balanchine
“I don’t want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance.”
—George Balanchine
“The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.”
—George Balanchine
“You haven’t got anything to dance about until you’re over thirty-five anyway.”
—Bert Balladine
“What Horace says is: Eheu fugaces Anni labuntur, Postume, Postume, Years glide away and are lost to me, lost to me! Now, when the folks in the dance sport their merry toes, Taglionis and Ellslers, Duvernays, and Ceritos, Sighing I murmur, ‘O mihi praeteritos!'”
—Canon R. H. Barham
“The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.”
—Mikhail Baryshnikov
“I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.”
—Mikhail Baryshnikov
“Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals.”
—Charles Baudelaire
“There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.”
—Vicki Baum
“Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.”
—Samuel Beckett
“A correct execution of an adagio is the ne plus ultra of our art; and I look on it as the touch-stone of the dancer.”
—Carlo Blasis
“Ballet is not technique but a way of expression that comes more closely to the inner language of man than any other.”
—George Borodin
“When 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
“It is not so much upon the number of exercises, as the care with which they are done, that progress and skill depend.”
—Auguste Bournonville
“All there is to be said for work compared to dance is that the latter is so much easier.”
—Heywood Broun
“The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing. Any problem in the world can be solved by dancing.”
—James Brown
“A child sings before it speaks, dances almost before it walks; music is with us from the beginning.”
—Pamela Brown
“Dance can give the inarticulate a voice.”
—Pamela Brown
“The human animal dances wildest on the edge of the grave.”
—Rita Mae Brown
“Dance every performance as if it were your last.”
—Erik Bruhn
“In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.”
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton
“On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined.”
—Lord Byron
“Kind are her answers, But her performance keeps no day; Breaks time, as dancers From their own Music when they stray.”
—Thomas Campion
“The further off from England the nearer is to France—Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.”
—Lewis Carroll
“Classical dancing is like being a mother: if you’ve never done it, you can’t imagine how hard it is.”
—Harriet Cavalli
“La danse, c’est le mouvement, et le mouvement, c’est la vie.” (“Dance is movement, and movement is life.”)
—Ludmilla Chiriaeff
“For hardly any man dances when sober, unless he is insane. Nor does he dance while alone, nor at a respectable and moderate party. Dancing is the final phase of a wild party with fancy decorations and a multitude of delights.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro Murena
“You’ve got to sing like you don’t need the money, Love like you’ll never get hurt. You’ve got to dance like no one is watching. It’s gotta come from the heart, if you want it to work.”
—Susannah Clark and Richard Leigh
“Dancing is at once rational & healthful: it gives animal spirits; it is the natural amusement of young people, & such it has been from the days of Moses.”
—William Cobbett
“We have no adequate conception of the perfection of the ancient tragic dance. The pleasure which the Greeks received from it had for its basis difference; & the more unfit the vehicle, the more lively was the curiosity & intense the delights at seeing the difficulty overcome.”
—S. T. Coleridge
“How inimitably graceful children are in general—before they learn to dance.”
—S. T. Coleridge
“Dancing is like dreaming with your feet!”
—Constanze
“Good choreography fuses eye, ear, and mind.”
—Arlene Croce
“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.”
—Attributed to Dick Crum (folk dance teacher)
“I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.”
—e. e. cummings
“The only way to do it is to do it.”
—Merce Cunningham
“Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. It’s the rhythm of your life. It’s the expression in time and movement, in happiness, joy, sadness and envy.”
—Jacques 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
“Ballet technique is arbitrary and very difficult. It never becomes easy—it becomes possible.”
—Agnes de Mille
“To dance is to be out of yourself, larger, more powerful, more beautiful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.”
—Agnes de Mille
“Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.”
—Agnes de Mille
“The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie.”
—Agnes de Mille
“There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good.”
—Edwin Denby
“You don’t have to know about ballet to enjoy it, all you have to do is look at it.”
—Edwin Denby