quotations about dance & dancing
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
Blood Memory
We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life.
MARTHA GRAHAM
attributed, Modern Dance (Stewart)
Dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.
OSCAR WILDE
attributed, New Contrast, vol. 34
If people stand in a circle long enough, they'll eventually begin to dance.
GEORGE CARLIN
Napalm and Silly Putty
To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power; it is glory on earth, and it is yours for the taking.
AGNES DE MILLE
attributed, Women Know Everything!
He waltzes like a Protestant curate.
KATE O'BRIEN
The Last of Summer
Dancing imitates character, emotion, and action, by rhythmical movement.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, 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 will be lost.
MARTHA GRAHAM
attributed, Women Know Everything!
Unlike music ... dance has a strong capacity for representation and imitation, which suggests that dance may have further served as an early form of language. Indeed, dance is the quintessential gesture language.
STEVEN BROWN
Scientific American, Jul. 2008
You can't dance cheerfully. Dancing is too important. It can be wild or solemn or gay or lewd or art for art's sake, but it can't be cheerful.
REX STOUT
Champagne for One
If the Louvre custodian can,
If the Guard Republican can,
If Van Gogh and Matisse and Cézanne can,
Baby, you can can-can too.
COLE PORTER
"Can-Can"
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is.
T. S. ELIOT
The Four Quartets
Not dancing well, I never danced at all--and how grievously has my heart ached when others where in the full enjoyment of that conversation which I had no right even to partake.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
The Letters of Walter Savage Landor to Marguerite
Dance, dance, for the figure is easy
The tune is catching and will not stop
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters
Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
W. H. AUDEN
Selected Poems
Dancing for the young is dangerous; for the old it is ridiculous.
BUSSY-RABUTIN
attributed, Day's Collacon
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
attributed, Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists
"Can you dance?" said the girl. Lancelot gave a short, amused laugh. He was a man who never let his left hip know what his right hip was doing.
P. G. WODEHOUSE
Meet Mr. Mulliner
Move while you're watching me
Dance with the enemy
I've got a remedy
Oh, oh-oh, oh-oh
Move while you're watching me
Dance with the enemy
Here is my remedy
Oh, oh-oh, oh-oh
LITTLE BOOTS
"Remedy"
See the music, hear the dance.
GEORGE BALANCHINE
attributed, Dancing for Balanchine