The purpose of art is higher than art. What we are really interested in are masterpieces of humanity.
-Alonzo King-
Technique–bodily control–must be mastered only because the body must not stand in the way of the soul’s expression. The only reason for mastering technique is to make sure the body does not prevent the soul from expressing itself.
-La Meri-
A toe shoe is as eccentric as the ballerina who wears it: their marriage is a commitment.
-Toni Bentley-
I am always doing things I can’t do, that’s how I get to do them.
-Pablo Picasso-
Dancing is wonderful training for girls. It’s the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it.
-Christopher Morley-
Dancers are the athletes of God.
-Albert Einstein-
People don’t know that they are being controlled but they are looking where I say to look and they are listening to what I say. And the minute you have a full frontal nudity, they immediately are not looking where you want them to and they are immediately having conversations with each other. They immediately start to talk. They are making all sorts of comparisons if you are a man or a woman, so you have lost concentration. One of the things that started me on this was Robert Helpmann who was the Head of the English Ballet at the time of “Oh! Calcutta!” which was a naked musical, and it was a big thing, you know. They said to Robert Helpmann: “Would you ever do naked ballet?” So he said: “No.” They said: “Why not?” He said: “Because everything does not stop when the music does!” Now I think that is a very good reason because what he is saying is you lose the concentration. Concentration is when the music stops – bang! – you are done. If you are full frontal nude, you are still looking at things still moving. So never do full frontal nudity.
-Michael Caine-
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why they call it “the present.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt-
Even if you weren’t born with a genetically perfect body, you can take something like a hand, where everyone has the same capabilities, and you can make it speak. You can make it speak in many different ways.
-Sarah Lamb-
I knew my way around a stage and was strong, so I could lift my partners up and put them down softly. And the other thing that I understood was the importance of eye contact. It’s essential when you’re performing to remain connected with the person you’re dancing with. I see it on the stage all the time when the dancers drop out of character and for the “look at me thing.” They break that famous fourth wall and let the audience in on the dancer’s private thinking, not the character’s thinking. That will destroy a performance.
-James Mitchell- The Dancer Within
The real beauty in life is that beauty can sometimes occur.
-Colum McCann-
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-
I get into the studio and I try to make visible what’s in the choreographer’s mind. Sometimes a choreographer wants you to have an idea, and sometimes you are the idea.
-Angel Corella, The Ballet Book-
A child sings before it speaks, dances almost before it walks. Music is in our hearts from the beginning.
-Pamela Brown-
Dance for yourself. If someone understands, good. If not, then no matter. Go right on doing what you love.
-Lois Hurst-
The ballet is a purely female thing. It is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener.
-George Balanchine-
Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s looking.
-Unknown-
Plie is the first thing you learn and the last thing you master.
-Suzanne Farrell-
Our pointe shoes are our instruments. If something’s wrong with my feet, all my mind goes there. I usually have six pairs ready. Soft shoes for one act, stiffer shoes for another, stronger shoes for a variation with a lot of turns.
-Nina Ananiashvili, The Ballet Book-
A pas de deux is a dialogue of love. How can there be conversation if one partner is dumb?
-Rudolf Nureyev-
When I miss class for one day, I know it.n When I miss class for two days, my teacher knows it. When I miss class for three days, the audience knows it.
-Rudolf Nureyev-
When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It’s to enjoy each step along the way.
-Wayne Dyer-
A dancer, more than any other human being, dies two deaths: the first, the physical when the powerfully trained body will no longer respond as you would wish. After all, I choreographed for myself. I never choreographed what I could not do. I changed steps in Medea and other ballets to accommodate the change. But I knew. And it haunted me. I only wanted to dance.
-Martha Graham-
Someone need not be perfect to be a great dancer – feeling a soul is more important than what the body can do.
-Marcia Haydée-
Learning to walk sets you free. Learning to dance gives you the greatest freedom of all: to express with your whole self the person you are.
-Melissa Hayden-
Poise is the finest point of balance it is possible to attain, both mentally and physically. The various parts of the physique having been adjusted truly to the centre of gravity, poise lifts the whole being to a point so delicate that it almost defies definition… Poise, the great law of equilibrium, is that second in infinity when action ceases and there is rest.
-Ruby Ginner-
The actor should know how to use his body, and have every part of it completely under his command, that he may use the whole of himself to interpret any character in its own rhythm. Conversely the dancer should study emotion and character in order that his every movement may have meaning.
-Ruby Ginner-
… the ultimate aim of all dance must be to move the whole being together in harmony. Therefore, having made the body sensitive, let it be swept by rhythm: the rhythm of music, by moving to a good swinging simple tune; the rhythm of nature, by floating in the sea, and surrendering to the will of the waves; or by lying on the branches of a tree in the wind to feel its effortless swaying. In this way the outer and the inner being will be harmonized…
-Ruby Ginner-
To dance without the help of any other art, to express, not another’s thought or rhythm, but the vision of the artist’s own spirit, that is the highest form of dance. The most exquisite expressions are those when the spirit only makes the song, and the dancer moves in a beauty of silence akin to the silence of the stars.
-Ruby Ginner-
The more you understand the music, the easier you can dance.
-Orlando Gutinez-
There are three steps you have to complete to become a professional dancer: learn to dance, learn to perform and learn how to cope with injuries.
-D. Gere-
They’re not particular about whether you’re playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.
-Dizzy Gillespie-
Minor things can become moments of great revelation when encountered for the first time.
-Dame Margot Fonteyn-
The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one’s work seriously and taking oneself seriously. The first is imperative and the second disastrous.
-Dame Margot Fonteyn-
The mechanics of épaulement are what gives ballet its inner transitions.
-William Forsythe-
I think Balanchine and Robbins talk to God and when I call, he’s out to lunch.
-Bob Fosse-
After I stopped dancing, I was unable to listen to beautiful music.
-Suzanne Farrell-
Although we do come from a silent profession, it is important for us to verbalize what we want to say. (As I tell my students): you could love someone all your life, but if you never say it how are they going to know? There comes a point when you have to say what you mean, which makes you scream louder when you dance.
-Suzanne Farrell-
As soon as I hear music, something in me starts to vibrate.
-Suzanne Farrell-
Dancers are a great breed of people. And they really want to dance so you don’t have to beg them to work. However, dancers sometimes build walls around themselves because they are presenting themselves all the time: dancing is very much a confession.
-Suzanne Farrell-
Fifth positions, heads, musicality, energy. Not technical things so much-getting your leg higher or doing more turns but things that would set you apart from other dancers. The only way you can be different is to be yourself If you don’t find your spirit and reveal it, you just look like every other dancer.
-Suzanne Farrell-
Even though I am a professional, and I know what the steps are, I don’t quite know how I’m going to do them, because I haven’t lived that moment yet. I always feel very insecure and I get very excited.
-Suzanne Farrell-
I think it was important that I learned to love to dance eventually for its own sake, as opposed to wanting to be a ballerina.
-Suzanne Farrell-
I was very happy that I was as normal as possible before I went into serious dance.
-Suzanne Farrell-
It’s a wonderful thing to be able to dance, tell your body what you want it to do.
-Suzanne Farrell-
The dancer’s body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul. The true dance is an expression of serenity; it is controlled by the profound rhythm of inner emotion. Emotion does not reach the moment of frenzy out of a spurt of action; it broods first, it sleeps like the life in the seed, and it unfolds with a gentle slowness. The Greeks understood the continuing beauty of a movement that mounted, that spread, that ended with a promise of rebirth.
-Isadora Duncan-
The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion, the steadfast and willing devotion to the labor that makes the class work not a gymnastic hour and a half, or at the lowest level, a daily drudgery, but a devotion that allows the classroom discipline to become moments of dancing too.
-Merce Cunningham-
The only way to do it is to do it.
-Merce Cunningham-
A dance legacy must be performed in order to be preserved.
-Ann Daly
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-
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
The dance world is too small in lots of ways – it’s too intense, it rattles around itself, and it needs exposing to other ideas.
-Siobhan Davies-
The Dance instills in you something that sets you apart. Something heroic and remote.
-Edgar Degas-
Many other women kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.
-Agnes de Mille-
I think most dancers would agree that the art of ballet chooses the dancer, not the other way around.
-Kevin McKenzie-
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.
-Unknown-
Dancing is the poetry of the foot.
-John Dryden-
Dance is bigger than the physical body. Think bigger than that. When you extend your arm, it doesn’t stop at the end of your fingers, because you’re dancing bigger than that: your dancing spirit.
-Judith Jamison-
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence.
-Samuel Johnson-
Ballet is not just movement, not simply abstract. It’s something beautiful. Sometimes there’s this feeling in the movement that makes me want to cry.
-Nina Ananiashvili, The Ballet Book-
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.
-Francis Bacon-
The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.
-George Balanchine-
Dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs. It is matter, graceful and terrible, animated and embellished by movement.
-Charles Baudelaire-
There are shortcuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.
-Vicki Baum-
I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-
The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-
Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals.
-Charles Baudelaire-
Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.
-Samuel Beckett-
Try everything once except incest and folk dancing.
-Sir Thomas Beecham-
Ballet is not technique but a way of expression that comes more closely to the inner language of man than any other.
-George Borodin-
While 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-
Just remember when you’re not practicing that someone somewhere is and when you meet them, they will win.
-Jaques 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-
When someone blunders, we say that he makes a misstep. Is it then not clear that All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill our history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill in dancing.
-Moliere-
I had to learn that slower is faster If you practice every day with patience and correctness, you will get there. It’s like preparing for a jump. You can’t rush. You must summon the appropriate energy with split-second timing and have an understanding of purpose to get up in the air. It requires training, confidence and mental effort. You can’t have a vocabulary without the alphabet. Balanchine used to say, “Do you want to be a poet of gesture or do you want to be a physical entity?”
Edward Villella- Masters of Movement
Dance is the art form; the body is the instrument. Learn to play the instrument so you can master the art form.
-Debbie Dee-
Birds use their wings to fly, because they do not know how to dance.
-Zeynep Okcu-
When movement becomes ecstatic, then this is dance. When the movement is so total there is no ego, then it is dance.
-Osho-
No one can arrive from being talented alone. God gives talent; work transforms talent into genius.
-Anna Pavlova-
Anna Pavlova was looking at her swan costume as she was dying. Her final words: “Get my swan costume ready.”
-Anna Pavlova-
Sometimes I have conflicting emotions because it’s been going on for so long now, but then I see somebody dancing real well and it just comes back like an old love. The flame ignites again.
-Ann Reinking-
Learn to dance, otherwise the angels in heaven won’t know what to do with you.
-St. Augustine-
Each time a dancer moves devoutly or a composer faithfully searches the silence for the veiled melodies, eternity is engaged.
-Maya Angelou-
Think of the magic of the foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It’s a miracle, and the dance…..is a celebration of that miracle.
-Martha Graham-
Dancing is like bank robbery, it takes split-second timing.
-Twyla Tharp-
The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
-Agnes de Mille-
When you go to dance, take heed whom you take by the hand.
-John Clarke-
All the gestures of children are graceful; the reign of distortion and unnatural attitudes commences with the introduction of the dancing master.
-Sir Joshua Reynolds-
Even today when I rehearse, I give it everything that I’ve got. If I’m in a performance and the lights go out—I glow in the dark. When you’re working before an audience, you have to make them feel like they can touch you. That’s the dancer within, reaching out.
Mitzi Gaynor- The Dancer Within
You get obsessed by dancing because there seems to be no choice. Sometimes you are miserable, sometimes you are floating in elation. But you can’t leave it alone until the passion is spun out. If you are lucky you try not to hate it when you leave.
-Lisa Rinehart-
The dance is the mother of the arts. Music and poetry exist in time; painting and architecture in space. But the dance lives at once in time and space.
-Curt Sachs-
You’re never more of an individual than when you’re a happy team player.
-Suzanne Farrell-
Do not brood. It makes the moment you are living in unavailable for learning and life.
-Suzanne Farrell-
Treat each class as if it were your first.
-Suzanne Farrell-
I set as my goal to be the best dancer I could be. Not the most famous, or the highest paid dancer, just the best I could be. Out of this discipline came great freedom and calm.
-Suzanne Farrell-
When you are on stage in front of an audience, you want to engage the entire crowd. If a thousand people are in the theater, you need to dance a thousand different ways, not one-thousandth of a way.
-Suzanne Farrell-
It is not a question of who dances but of who or what does not dance.
-Ruth St. Denis-
We should realize in a vivid and revolutionary sense that we are not in our bodies but our bodies are in us.
-Ruth St. Denis-
There was never a merry world since the fairies left off dancing.
-John Selden-
Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made.
-Ted Shawn-
Success comes from having a fulfilling experience and being inside the moment of that experience. Success does not come in retrospect or as a recollection or even as an evaluation from others. lt’s not something that you can physically hold onto or repeat at will. Only when you acknowledge the special moments can you truly feel the effects of your most wonderful achievements.
-Tommy Tune- Masters of Movement
Classical language and musicality are not simply effete traditions belonging to the bygone upper classes. The vocabulary and manner of classical ballet express a high order of discipline and restraint, a sense of harmony with forces larger and more lasting than the individual.
-Marsha B. Siegel-
A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I’m beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.
-Twyla Tharp-
I think that probably the moments of discovery do come from a place that is not totally organized. Order is something that we already know about. Discoveries are in a place we don’t already know about.
-Twyla Tharp-
I would have to challenge the term, modern dance. I don’t really use that term in relation to my work. I simply think of it as dancing. I think of it as moving.
-Twyla Tharp-
I’m not one who divides music, dance or art into various categories. Either something works, or it doesn’t.
-Twyla Tharp-
It’s extremely arrogant and foolish to think you can ever outwit your audience.
-Twyla Tharp-
The only thing I fear more than change is no change.
-Twyla Tharp-
This is not a pleasant route for many young people to consider. You have to be either hopelessly passionate, or very stupid.
-Twyla Tharp-
A brand-new pair of toe shoes presents itself to us as an enemy with a will of its own that must be tamed.
-Toni Bentley-
A toe shoe is an eccentric as the ballerina who wears it: their marriage is a commitment.
-Toni Bentley-
Ballet technique is arbitrary and very difficult. It never becomes easy; it becomes possible.
-Agnes De Mille-
Ballet’s image of perfection is fashioned amid a milieu of wracked bodies, fevered imaginations, Balkan intrigue and sulfurous hatreds where anything is likely, and dancers know it.
-Shana Alexander-
Dancing is like bank robbery, it takes split-second timing.
-Twyla Tharp-
If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point dancing it.
-Isadora Duncan-
Think of the magic of the foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It’s a miracle, and the dance…..is a celebration of that miracle.
-Martha Graham-
People come to see beauty, and I dance to give it to them.
-Judith Jamison-
On the plié and rélevé is based the whole structure of the classical ballet.
-Christian Johansson- Principal teacher at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence.
-Samuel Johnson-
The body is the source of amazing energy. This thing wants to live. It is a powerful engine. The brain (is) a reservoir of images, dreams, fears, associations, language. And its potential we can’t even begin to understand. Movement begins to negotiate the distance between the brain and the body and it can be surprising what we learn about each other.
-Bill T. Jones-
A weak first step transmits nothing.
-Mai Kishikawa-
A dance performance is rather like going out into a battlefield. You have to hold the attention of as many as five to 10,000 people a lot of whom do not follow your language.
-Yamini Krishnamurthy-
Every teacher will tell you that you cannot dance classical technique with perfection, there is no such thing, there is no way. So you have to adapt the technique to your abilities or to your deficiencies. Learn to cheat!
-Ji?í Kylián-
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 K. Langer-
When one lifts a ballerina, it is not her weight but her nature that causes the problem.
-Maris Liepa-
The teacher doesn’t teach, not really. The teacher offers stimulation and ways in which the person can educate himself or herself. At best the teacher wakes up that person and makes a person hungry.
-Murray Louis-
Dance has to unfold with the grace of a tree giving out leaves, flowers and then tiny fruit. Nothing so beautiful can be done in haste.
-Pt. Birju Maharaj-
Even the ears must dance.
-Natalya Makarova-
The expression should come from within oneself, conveying the spiritual –something between earth and heaven. And if one runs, one should not seem to touch the ground.
-Natalya Makarova-
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?
-Frankie Manning-
Poetry is like dancing. Not all of us can be ballet dancers, but all of us dance. Everyone has a poet inside of him struggling to get out.
-Marks and Spencer-
If you dance with your heart your body will follow.
-Mia Michaels-
He [Gene Kelly] once told me dancing was a man’s game, as much of a sport as baseball itself. And he made us believe that. He changed our minds and suddenly, all of America wanted to dance just like Gene Kelly.
-Liza Minnelli-
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.
-Angela Monet-
The dance, more than any other art, lives through the genius of its interpreters.
-Lillian Moore-
Hold your hands out gently. Ask others to do the same. See how different each person looks. Each person has their own unique and natural beauty. Use this natural beauty when you dance. Respect your individuality.
-Artemis Mourat-
Ballet is a dance executed by the human soul.
-Alexander Pushkin-
No artist is ahead of his time. He is time; the others are just behind the times.
-Martha Graham-
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-
I would like to tell all dancers to forget themselves and the desire for self-display. They must become completely absorbed in the dance. Even in a classical variation there should never be any thought of a dancer doing a variation – he should become identified with it.
-Anthony Tudor-
If I see a human body on the stage, I don’t see it as an abstraction. I see it as a body.
-Anthony Tudor-
Dance is like wine it matures with every performance.
-Alarmel Valli-
Dancing is an art because it is subject to rules.
-Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire-
Dance helps us dream bigger dreams and understand our connectedness. When we close our eyes and dream, we are all brothers.
-Russell Clark- Masters of Movement
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
-William Butler Yeats
On dancing on pointe:
Why don’t they just get taller girls?
-Henny Youngman-
The future belongs to those who believe in their dreams.
-Eleanor Roosevelt-
There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.
-Paulo Coelho-
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the things you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
-H. Jackson Brown-
A day I don’t dance is a day I don’t live.
-Anonymous-
All that music and only two feet.
-Anonymous-
Dance to express, not to impress.
-Anonymous-
Dancers offer us our only earthly chance to catch a glimpse of the angelic host.
-Anonymous-
Dancing is like life: it’s good to have a plan, but be prepared to improvise.
-Anonymous-
In swing, whatever works is right.
-Anonymous-
Seen from the wings, a ballerina’s life is made-up of sheer physical misery relieved only by the euphoria of performance. Physical agony is a normal thing backstage and arouses the awe and pity only of outsiders unused to its sight.
-Anonymous-
There are never mistakes, just unexpected solos.
-Anonymous-
We dancers are very lonely people. We work together but we are very much self-made, self-centered individuals.
-Anonymous-
We do not always dance because we are happy, but we dance and cannot help but become happy.
-Anonymous-
You can dance perfectly, but you will be never an artist if you dance without your soul. {Tu peux danser parfaitement, mais tu ne sera jamais artiste si tu ne danses pas avec ton âme.}
-Anonymous-
In couple dances, gentlemen, hold onto her like you like her.
-Richard Duree-
In eroticism as dance: one of the partners is always charged with leading the other. {Il en va de l’érotisme comme de la danse: l’un des partenaires se charge toujours de conduire l’autre.}
-Milan Kundera-
In the pivotal moves of the dance, those in which the dance partners exchange leadership, the power of the dance can be seen to alternate as quickly as that of sweat-slick wrestlers or fate-heavy duelists. Dominance is always fragile and unsure; subjugation is merely quiescence in which to plot the regaining of the upper hand. Thus, energies of ego and control struggle in a psychomania in three dimensions on the dance floor.
-Richard Martin-
Dancing is an amazing activity. You can go up to a gorgeous woman that you’ve never met before, spend three minutes touching her virtually anywhere on her body, and she thanks you for it afterwards!
-Mario Robau, Jr-
It always takes two. There’s the speaker and the listener, you and the audience. You’ve worked long hours and it comes down to that moment, that performance. The goal isn’t just to improve yourself, but to transport people.
-Gillian Murphy, The Ballet Book-
You don’t have to know about ballet to enjoy it, all you have to do is look at it.
-Edwin Denby-
Dancing: The highest intelligence in the freest body.
-Isadora Duncan-
There are likewise three kinds of dancers: first, those who consider dancing as a sort of gymnastic drill, made up of impersonal and graceful arabesques; second, those who, by concentrating their minds, lead the body into the rhythm of a desired emotion, expressing a remembered feeling or experience. And finally, there are those who convert the body into a luminous fluidity, surrendering it to the inspiration of the soul.
-Isadora Duncan-
If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.
-Isadora Duncan-
The following hints on ballroom etiquette may be of use to persons unacquainted with dancing, or who have not been accustomed to attending balls with ladies:
• It is improper for two gentlemen to dance together when ladies are present.
• While dancing, a lady should consider herself engaged to her partner, and therefore she is not at liberty to hold a flirtation, between figures, with another gentleman.
• If you cannot waltz gracefully, do not attempt to waltz at all.
• In waltzing, a gentleman should exercise the utmost delicacy in touching the waist of his partner.
• When a young lady declines dancing with a gentleman, it is her duty to give him a reason no matter how frivolous the excuse may be.
• If a lady refuses to dance with you, bear the refusal with grace; and if you perceive her afterwards dancing with another, seem not to notice it.
-Thomas Hillgrove’s A Complete Practical Guide to the Art of Dancing, Dick & Fitzgerald, New York, 1864-
There are three steps you have to complete to become a professional dancer: learn to dance, learn to perform, and learn how to cope with injuries.
-D. Gere-
Technical perfection is insufficient. It is an orphan without the true soul of the dancer.
-Sylvie Guillem-
Dance is the loftiest, most moving, most beautiful of the arts, because it is not a mere translation or abstraction of life; it is life itself!
-Martha Graham-
Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery.
-Martha Graham-
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-
Bravura has nothing to do with technique. It’s all about timing and oozing life.
-Kevin McKenzie, The Ballet Book-
The noble entitlement bespeaks an élan, a certain type of relationship with your partner. It means formidable technique not displayed lightly. The excitement comes from elegance.
-Kevin McKenzie, The Ballet Book-
Learning to walk sets you free. Learning to dance gives you the greatest freedom of all: to express your whole self, the person you are.
-Melissa Hayden-
He who cannot dance puts the blame on the floor.
-Hindu proverb-
It takes an athlete to dance, but an artist to be a dancer.
-Shanna LaFleur-
Even the ears must dance.
-Natalie Makarova-
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-
Technique–bodily control–must be mastered only because the body must not stand in the way of the soul’s expression.
-La Meri-
The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie.
-Agnes de Mille-
Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
-Agnes de Mille-
Master technique and then forget about it and be natural.
-Anna Pavlova-
Everyday there must be something I can’t do, otherwise it’s boring.
-Maret Robier-
To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there’s no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.
-Jack Handey-
Dance every performance as if it were your last.
-Erik Bruhn-
Don’t be afraid to be amazing.
-Andy Offutt Irwin-
Great artists are people who find ways to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.
-Margot Fonteyn-
I have performed for thousands when they found me exotic, the vogue, daring, but I have danced, at any given time, for about ten people…. They were the ones that left the theater forever different from the way they were when they came in. All of my long, long life, I have danced for those ten.
-Ruth St. Denis-
One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self- confidence is preparation.
-Arthur Ashe-
Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.-
The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have.
-Norman Vincent Peale-
To dance, put your hand on your heart and listen to the sound of your soul.
-Luigi-
Dance, in its broadest sense, is a physical acknowledgment of the rhythm of the universe and of our own lives.
-Carol Roan-
Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully, and with inevitability. Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made. Dancing is like dreaming with your feet!
-Constanze-
To sing well and to dance is to be well educated.
-Plato-
Without dance I cannot feel my soul, hear my heart, or see my dreams.
-Nahara-
And when they ask you, ‘what is your church?’ you say, ‘I dance.’
-anonymous-
Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain.
-Anonymous-
I just know that when I go on stage, I give everything I have, not only my legs, not only my feet, not only my body. I try to tell a story. Sometimes I’m able to cry because I feel like it. Sometimes I’m able to love because I feel like it.
-Sylvie Gulliem-
I use dancing to embellish, extend or enlarge upon an existing emotion.
-Gower Champion-
It is not the movements that make a dance beautiful, it is the emotions that inspired the movement that make it beautiful.
-Kristy Nilsson-
Musicality is when the dancers’ movements appear to create the music – and not the other way around.
-Kristy Nilsson-
Then come the lights shining on you from above. You are a performer. You forget all you learned, the process of technique, the fear, the pain, you even forget who you are you become one with the music, the lights, indeed one with the dance.
-Shirley Maclaine-
Great art is never perfect; perfect art is never great.
-Edward Abbey-
If I had listened to the critics I’d have died drunk in the gutter.
-Chekov-
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-Eleanor Roosevelt-
The fear is worse than the pain.
-Shannon Bahr-
When we give ourselves over completely to the spirit of the dance, it becomes a prayer.
-Gabrielle Roth-
When you take dancing lessons, you learn steps and you learn steps and you learn steps. It can go on for a long time. And then one day, you just learn to dance, and it is so different.
-Bill Austin-
Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.
-Anonymous-
A mistake is simply another way of doing things.
-Katherine Graham-
Accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.
-Anonymous-
Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
-Scott Adams-
Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.
-Charles Baudelaire-
Ballet technique is arbitrary and very difficult. It never becomes easy—it becomes possible.
-Agnes de Mille-
So many dancers feel that what they look like is more important than who they are. This is a real danger for dancers who focus for years on appearances and think of themselves as merely a body. The choreographer can’t work with them in the realm of ideas. It’s a huge problem if they haven’t been connecting internally. If they’ve decided that what’s inside is of little value, they can only try to approximate some kind of look.
-Alonzo King- Masters of Movement
The mother of the dance is the melody because she gives you everything, tells you everything you need to know, like a mother. The father of the dance is the rhythm and he is the strong one, the leader, the authority ? as a father should be!
-Tayyar Akdeniz-
Dance is for everybody. I believe that the dance came from the people and that it should always be delivered back to the people.
-Alvin Ailey-
It’s true of all great artists that the more you see, the more you want to see.
-Peter Anastos-
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-
Dancing allows me to explore myself in so many ways, to learn about my limitations and strengths, my ability to cope with adversity and to go farther than I thought I could. You find out what you’re made of.
-Andrew Asnes-
Dancing is a sweat job.
-Fred Astaire-
Do it big, do it right, and do it with style.
-Fred Astaire-
If the dance is right, there shouldn’t be a single superfluous movement.
-Fred Astaire-
Some people seem to think that good dancers are born, but all the good dancers I have known are taught or trained.
-Fred Astaire-
The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it’s considered to be your style.
-Fred Astaire-
This search for what you want is like tracking something that doesn’t want to be tracked. It takes time to get a dance right, to create something memorable.
-Fred Astaire-
I praise the dance, for it frees people from the heaviness of matter and binds the isolated to community. I praise the dance, which demands everything: health and a clear spirit and a buoyant soul. Dance is a transformation of space, of time, of people, who are in constant danger of becoming all brain, will, or feeling. Dancing demands a whole person, one who is firmly anchored in the center of his life, who is not obsessed by lust for people and things and the demon of isolation in his own ego. Dancing demands a freed person, one who vibrates with the equipoise of all his powers. I praise the dance. O man, learn to dance, or else the angels in heaven will not know what to do with you.
-Saint Augustine-
The heart of the dance is the heart of the dancer.
-Ghazallah al-Badriyyah-
Ballet dancing is arduous, strenuous activity. Students are engaged in physical training that rivals the training Olympic athletes undergo. At the same time, they strive for physical perfection not for the prowess alone but as a way of achieving the means necessary to express the pure nature of their art.
-George Balanchine-
Ballet is important and significant – yes. But first of all, it is a pleasure.
-George Balanchine-
Choreography is simpler than you think. Just go and do, and don’t think so much about it. Just make something interesting.
-George Balanchine-
God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it-from what I see, from what the dancers do, from what others do….
-George Balanchine-
I am a cloud – in trousers.
-George Balanchine-
I could never make a ballet by wrinkling my brow and concentrating. If you set out deliberately to make a masterpiece, how will you ever get it finished.
-George Balanchine-
It’s like the time capsule with everything in it. Or like the seed that when you plant it, becomes the enormous tree with leaves and fruit. Everybody was in that little seed, and so everything can open. The tree of dance is like that. It just takes a long, long time to blossom.
-George Balanchine-
Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned.
-George Balanchine-
My muse must come to me on union time.
-George Balanchine-
Put a man and a girl on stage and there is already a story; a man and two girls, there’s already a plot.
-George Balanchine-
The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they reach the audience through the eye. It’s the illusion created which convinces the audience, much as it is with the work of a magician.
-George Balanchine-
You haven’t got anything to dance about until you’re over thirty-five anyway.
-Bert Balladine-
Technique is what you need to do to dance well, principally to make it feel good to your partner. Style is everything else you do when you dance, hopefully to make it look good to your partner, and your audience.
-David Barker-
Be guided. Face what you don’t know and allow those who do to help you reach your full artistic potential. There are no great talents out there who are fully evolved and developed without understanding the history, tradition, philosophy, behaviors, and relationships pertaining to their particular artistic expression You can’t just rely on the audience loving you because you do wonderful tours In the air That’s great, really great, but all of that has to be networked with all the other aspects of the art form. So often we have brilliant talents who show us their brilliance but never achieve the artistry.
-Edward Villella- Masters of Movement
Love is the key to success. You can call it different things, and get technical about it, but that’s what it comes down to. Love is the most powerful source from which all creativity grows People often believe that it’s angst or torment that inspires creative work, but for me it’s love. I try to infuse my work with this magical ingredient, and when I do, everything is taken care of. Success comes when the intention to serve what you love and feel passionate about is realized. You may not become financially successful or publicly celebrated, but that is not always the true measure of success. For example, the short-order cook who makes a perfect scrambled egg because of the care he’s invested is a success. I feel like I’m doing what I was put here to do. When you find something that you love to do and people love to see you do it, that’s the happiest that a man can be. What makes me feel successful is using the gifts that have been bestowed upon me and giving them back In the form of entertainment.
-Tommy Tune- Masters of Movement
I was always hanging around, trying to imitate the dancers. One day I was in the rehearsal room with Cyd Charisse when she stopped cold and yelled, “She has to sit down. She’s driving me crazy.” “I’m sorry Cyd,” I said, and sat down quietly. But then I thought to myself, how am I going to learn this? I watched her and counted. At the break I’d run into another room and practice. Then I’d run back and learn the rest of it. So I learned at a very young age how to pick up steps. This gave me a great advantage later on. I could learn choreography very quickly. And I did something else. I’d watch the choreographer’s face. I realized that if you watched his face, you got the reason, the intention, the answer to why he was doing the steps.
-Liza Minnelli- The Dancer Within
One can be a great artist without being a great technician. There have been many famous ballet stars who did not have the ideal body or total mastery of all aspects of the art form, but on the stage they possessed magnetism—true artistry, by which I mean a charismatic quality. You can work with a coach to try and develop it, but a true artist has the ability to express his inner feelings naturally.
-Fernando Bujones- The Dancer Within
Dance has become an exclusionary enterprise. To participate, one must be thinner than thin, of pleasing form, flexible, athletic and young. If you are not all these things, you will be allowed to dance in the privacy of your own living room. You just wouldn’t dare to put yourself onstage.
-Clive Barnes-
No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-
The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-
The problem is not making up the steps but deciding which ones to keep.
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-
There comes a moment in a young artist’s life when he know she has to bring something to the stage from within himself. He has to put in something in order to be able to take something.
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-
Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals.
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-
Even when she walks one would believe that she dances.
-Charles Baudelaire-
I consider myself an actress first, a dancer second, and a singer third. Why? Because the dancer needs a reason to move—that’s the actor informing the dancer. So I worked on my acting and gradually developed a singing voice.
-Liza Minnelli- The Dancer Within
There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.
-Vicki Baum-
Dance is something that you do—not something you talk about. It’s abstract and emotional. Art comes from a private, hidden, never fully understood place. You lose yourself in it. You become one with the music; it’s godlike; it’s spiritual. To talk about it is to trespass in a restricted zone.
-Donna McKenzie- The Dancer Within
Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.
-Samuel Beckett-
There are those who dance to the rhythm that is played to them, those who only dance to their own rhythm, and those who don’t dance at all.
-José Bergamín-
God respects us when we work, but he loves us when we dance.
-Les Blanc-
It is not so much upon the number of exercises, as the care with which they are done, that progress and skill depend.
-August Bournonville-
Love is a lot like dancing; you just surrender to the music.
-Pierce Brosnan-
I learned to act by watching Martha Graham dance, and I learned to dance by watching Charlie Chaplin act.
-Louise Brooks-
Movement without meaning is just exercise.
-Marie Brooks-
Style is an afterthought, not something that is preconceived. If I’m digging for diamonds in a mine, the maze that I’ve dug, which might look interesting, is just an aftereffect of all the digging, nothing more. The Buddhists say, “Look.” But we get hung up staring at the finger instead of where it’s pointing.
-Alonzo King- Masters of Movement
So if the dance is five minutes long, make yourself run for perhaps eight minutes. That way, you over-train and the dance will seem easier…
-Deborah Bull-
It’s not magic! It’s physics. The speed of the turn is what keeps you upright.
-Deborah Bull-
Young dancers are training at a very vulnerable time in their lives… So train the whole person, not just the dancer.
-Deborah Bull-
In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.
-Edward Bulwer-Lytton-
Our profession creates illusions. It is not a matter of having a perfect body, but of dancing in such a way as to look perfect.
-Wilheim Burmann-
Classical dancing is like being a mother: if you’ve never done it, you can’t imagine how hard it is.
-Harriet Cavalli-
The really great dancer is perhaps a rarer phenomenon than great musicians, painters or sculptors. This is because dance is a consummation of all these arts. The dancer, in addition to the qualities that pure dance demands, must be sensitive to and have an uncanny ear for music, must have a painter’s sensibility to the significant line, a sculptor’s approach to form, an architect’s vision of spaceand a trained actor’s responses to dramatic situations.
-K. Subhas Chandran-
If their feet aren’t in the right place, at least their hearts are.
-Christian M. Chensvold-
Fantasy is a reality you can dance to.
-Richard Cohen-
Ballet is only good when it is great.
-Arlene Croce-
It is through strength of technique that the body stays in possession of music.
-Arlene Croce-
Dance is music made visible.
-George Balanchine-
If anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away.
-Maria Tallchief-
When you are on stage you don’t see faces. The lights are in your eyes and you see just this black void out in front of you. And yet you know there is life out there, and you have to get your message across.
-Suzanne Farrell-
Technique is what you fall back on when you run out of inspiration.
-Rudolf Nureyev-
We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.
-Japanese Proverb-
Dancing is like breathing–missing a day doing either is very bad.
-Vera Ellen-
Cheerleaders are dancers gone retarded.
-Bring it On-
Dancers have a very hard job. We must take our ugly, callused, blistered, and bruised feet and present them in a way so that they are mistaken as the most beautiful things on Earth.
-Anonymous-
That which cannot be spoken can be sung; that which cannot be sung can be danced.
-French proverb-
Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays.
-George Balanchine-
You can’t see a painter or a writer or a musician if you just look at them, but you can see a dancer in a child if they’ve studied ballet for a year.
-The Dancer and the Dance-
Dancers work and live from the inside. They drive themselves constantly producing a glow that lights not only themselves but audience after audience.
-M. Louis-
I see dance being used as communication between body and soul, to express what is too deep to find for words.
-Ruth St. Denis-
There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good.
-Edwin Denby-
Please send me your last pair of shoes, worn out with dancing as you mentioned in your letter, so that I might have something to press against my heart.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-
Ballet is the one form of theater where nobody speaks a foolish word all evening, nobody on the stage at least.
-Edwin Denby-
Most people think of ballet as children in little tutus. They don’t know it is sweat, blood and tears as well!
-Nan Keating-
Ballet class is like Life Lessons 101. You learn some of life’s most important lessons here that you will carry with you forever.
-Joanne H. Morscher-
Letting go of perfectionism, so ingrained in the nature of a ballet dancer, can be the most difficult thing.
-Author Unknown-
There are two basic elements to classical ballet. They are quality and quantity. Quantity is how much a dancer can physically do…the element that gives an artist the freedom to concentrate on quality, while quality is how he or she does it…quality of movement…the most difficult phase… requires long and arduous training.
-Igor Schwezoff-
What’s so wonderful about ballet is that it’s mind-driven physicality. It’s almost a Greek ideal of body, mind, and form.
-Edward Villella-
Common sense would tell parents never to send their children to a ballet school. Common sense would tell teenagers that there is a wider and happier world beyond the grueling strictures of daily barre and class. Common sense would tell the graduating student that there are infinitely superior ways of making money than joining a professional ballet company. Common sense would tell a young dancer that very few (laughably few) of his or her colleagues will ever make it to the top or even near the top. Yet… there remains the dance and the dancer.
-Author Unknown-
If it were not for dreams there would not be such a thing as ballet, the cruelest of the performing arts.
-Author Unknown-
Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he’ll escape.
-W. H. Auden-
To dance is to reach for a word that doesn’t exist,
To sing the heartsong of a thousand generations,
To feel the meaning of a moment in time.
-Beth Jones-
Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts. For it is no mere translation or abstraction of life. It is life itself.
-Henry Havelock Ellis-
To touch, to move, to inspire. This is the true gift of dance.
-Aubrey Lynch-
Dance isn’t something that can be explained in words. It has to be danced.
-Paige Arden-
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-
The trained dancer must not only have grace and elegance, but also the leap of an Olympic hurdler, the balance of a tight-rope walker and panther-like strength and agility.
-Camilla Jessel-
You have to think big to be big.
-Claude M. Bristol-
We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.
-Carlos Castaneda-
It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you are.
-Author Unknown-
Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to be over, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.
-Author Unknown-
The journey between who you once were, and who you are now becoming, is where the dance of life really takes place.
-Barbara De Angelis-
Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.
-Martha Graham-
Dancing faces you towards Heaven, whichever direction you turn.
-Sweetpea Tyler-
Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.
-Martha Graham
You know you’re dancing when tears of
pain and happiness blend in with your sweat.
-Anonymous-
Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.
-Martha Graham-
To learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same.
-Martha Graham-
Quitters never win and winners never quit.
-Anonymous-
You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled, then something has been lost.
-Martha Graham-
Try to be fearless, because fear can inhibit you and keep you from a life.
-Miranda Weese-
You see, when weaving a blanket, an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out.
-Martha Graham-
Behind each victory is a long train of suffering!
-Anonymous-
He who dances without leading is merely making the girl mad.
-Anonymous-
Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.
-Edgar Degas-
Football isn’t a contact sport; it’s a collision sport.
Dancing is a contact sport.
-Vince Lombardi-
Dancing’s just a conversation between two people.
Talk to me.
-Steven Rogers-
Talk about dance? Dance is not something to talk about. Dance is to dance.
-Peter Saint James-
To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak.
-Hopi Indian Saying-
They who love dancing too much seem to have more brains in their feet than in their head.
-Anonymous-
Dance is a delicate balance between perfection and beauty.
-Anonymous-
Dancing appears glamorous, easy, delightful. But the path to paradise of the achievement is not easier than any other. There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep. There are times of complete frustration, there are daily small deaths.
-Martha Graham-
All I ever needed was the music and the mirror.
-A Chorus Line-
Everything is beautiful at the ballet.
-A Chorus Line-
Those move easiest who have learned to dance.
-Alexander Pope-
The physical language of the body is so much more powerful than words.
-Bill Irwin-
Many of the simplest exercises become harder in the center.
-Camilla Jessel-
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-
Nothing so clearly and inevitably reveals the inner man than movement and gesture. It is quite possible, if one chooses, to conceal and dissimulate behind words or paintings or statues or other forms of human expression, but the moment you move you stand revealed, for good or ill, for what you are.
-Doris Humphrey-
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-
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-
So many dancers leave me untouched, unmoved. A dancer should be able to raise an arm and make someone cry, in the way Isadora Duncan did. It is a necessity for any art to move you.
-Pauline Koner-
Dancing should look easy; like an optical illusion. It should seem effortless. When you do a difficult variation, the audience is aware that it is demanding and that you have the power and strength to do it. But in the end, when you take your bow, you should look as if you were saying, ‘Oh, it was nothing. I could do it again.’
-Bruce Marks-
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.’
-George Balanchine-
The choreographic process is exhausting. It happens on one’s feet after hours of work, and the energy required is roughly the equivalent of writing a novel and winning a tennis match simultaneously.
-Agnes de Mille-
It’s not the turning that’s hard in pirouettes. It’s that you’ve got to keep on doing it.
-Anonymous-
Bleeding feet will bond us.
-Liza Minelli-
You don’t stop dancing from growing old. You grow old from stopping to dance.
-Anonymous-
First comes the sweat. Then comes the beauty if you’re very lucky and have said your prayers.
-George Balanchine-
Dance is so important in the world. It needs no language. Our bodies speak a language of its own.
-Ibrahim Farrah-
When the music and dance create with accord…their magic captivates both the heart and the mind.
-Jean Georges Noverre-
Dancing is silent poetry.
-Simonides-
Dance from your heart and love your music, and the audience will love you in return.
-Maria Tallchief-
You can’t expect the audience to give you its attention. You have to grab it.
-Anonymous-
You either do the pirouette or you shoot yourself – one way or the other something must happen!
-Anonymous-
Only angels and ballerinas dance on their toes.
-David Ira Rottenberg-
Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.
-Victoria Holt-
It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you don’t stop.
-Confucius-
One can go a long way after one is tired.
-French proverb-
It isn’t hard to be good from time to time….What’s hard is being good every day.
-Willie Mays-
A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?
-Robert Browning-
The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
-Arthur C. Clarke-
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
-Aristotle-
Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
-Confucius-
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-
They can because they think they can.
-Virgil-
Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
-Robert Collier-
There is only one success–to be able to spend your life in your own way.
-Christopher Morley-
You get more negative reactions than positive reactions as you go through life, and the big lesson is nobody counts you out but yourself…I never have; I never will.
-Buddy Ebsen-
The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.
-Vince Lombardi-
The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain.
-Kahlil Gibran-
Who aims at excellence will be above mediocrity; who aims at mediocrity will be far short of it.
-Burmese Saying-
Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you.
-Anonymous-
Never excuse yourself.
-Henry Ward Beecher-
Those who try never regret.
-David Ira Rottenberg-
It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.
-Isaac Asimov-
Talents are best nurtured in solitude, but character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.
-Henry David Thoreau-
Ferocity doesn’t care what it looks like.
-Maurya Kerr-
The artistic path is a fearless occupation.
-Alonzo King-
To change the world, you must first change yourself. And baby, that’s hard enough.
-Alonzo King-
The world loves a clone and a good knock-off. It cheats the artist… In the obsession for technical wizardry, people disappear; and if your voice isn’t present in a relationship, you don’t matter.
-Alonzo King-
The deep art… That’s the part that has to be guarded like a miser would his money… Like a dope addict would his dope… Like a lover with their love.
-Alonzo King-
Be IN it. Get drunk in the moment.
-Alonzo King-
In life, as in dance, grace glides on blistered feet.
-Alice Abrams-
To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gifts – absolute gifts – which have not been acquired by one’s own effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul… The brave soul. The soul that dares and defies.
-Kate Chopin, The Awakening-
Why are we inspired by another person’s courage? Maybe because it gives us the sweet and genuine surprise of discovering some trace, at least, of the same courage in ourselves.
-Laurence Shames-
The world bursts at the seams with people ready to tell you you’re not good enough. On occasion, some may be correct. But do not do their work for them. Seek any job; ask anyone out; pursue any goal. Don’t take it personally when they say ‘no’ – they may not be smart enough to say ‘yes.’
-Keith Olbermann-
It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection. So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly.
-Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love, after the Bhagavad Gita-
In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down.
-Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love-
Great creativity begins with tolerance.
–Yo-Yo Ma-
Tricks well-mastered are called techniques. Techniques half learned are merely tricks.
-Ralf Dean Omar-
Our classes are our practices.
Our dance sneakers are our equipment.
Our teacher is our coach.
Our dance clothes are our jerseys.
Our performances are our matches.
Our audiences are our fans.
Our concert is our tournament.
The rhythm is our rule.
Failure is our opponent; we will not lose.
This is our game. This is our sport.
-Vala Yankovski-
Expect the best and you seldom get less.
-Mellissa Taylor-
Why be normal? What’s the point?
-Richard Saunders-
The secret to genius is to carry the spirit of a child into old age, which means never loosing your enthusiasm.
-Aldous Huxley-
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
-Reggie Leach-
Being alive is about playing to win. Being brain dead is when you play not to loose.
-Richard Saunders-
If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.
-Juan Ramon Jimenez-
You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down.
-Mary Pickford-
Living fearlessly is not the same thing as never being afraid. It’s good to be afraid occasionally. Fear is a great teacher.
-Michael Ignatieff-
Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.
-Sir Winston Churchill-
Throw your heart out in front of you… and run ahead to catch it.
-proverb-
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
-Albert Einstein-
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
-Albert Eistein-
It would be better if you begin to teach others only after you yourself have learned something.
-Albert Einstein-
One must shy away from questionable undertakings, even when they bear a high-sounding name.
-Albert Einstein-
If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.
-John F. Kennedy-
A child mis-educated is a child lost.
-John F. Kennedy-
A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.
-John F. Kennedy-
Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.
-Thomas Edison-
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
-Thomas Edison-
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
-Thomas Edison-
There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.
-Thomas Edison-
A genius is a talented person who does his homework.
-Thomas Edison-
Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with preparation.
-Thomas Edison-
Every generation needs a new revolution.
-Thomas Jefferson-
If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.
-Ben Franklin-
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
-Ben Franklin-
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
-Abraham Lincoln-
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
-Abraham Lincoln-
It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance and that in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.
-Teddy Roosevelt-
Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.
-Eleanor Roosevelt-
Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.
-Eleanor Roosevelt-
This art, born of genius and good taste, can become beautiful and varied to an infinite degree.
-J.G. Noverre-
Dancing and ballets would undoubtedly take on a new lease on life, if the customs established by a spirit of fear and jealousy did not in some way close the path of glory…
-J.G. Noverre-
In order to dance well, nothing is so important as the turning outwards of the thigh; and nothing is so natural to men as the contrary position.
-J.G. Noverre-
The abuse of the best things is always detrimental.
-J.G. Noverre-
True art consists in concealing art.
-J.G. Noverre-
It is shameful that dancing should renounce the empire it might assert over the mind and only endeavor to please the sight.
-J.G. Noverre-
A fine picture is but the image of nature; a finished ballet is nature herself.
-J.G. Noverre-
If our ballets be feeble, monotonous and dull, if they be devoid of ideas, meaning, expression and character, it is less the fault of the art than that of the artist.
-J.G. Noverre-
At our theaters we only see feeble copies of the copies that have proceeded them, renounce that slavish routine which keeps your art in its infancy; examine everything relative to the development of talents; be original; form a style for yourselves based on your private studies; if you must copy, imitate nature, it is a noble model and never misleads those who follow it.
-J.G. Noverre-
I cannot avoid condemning all those who, from self-conceit have the pretension to imitate great artists of the past. If their powers of emotion be weak, their powers of expression will be likewise.
-J.G. Noverre-
In order that our art may arrive at the degree of the sublime which I demand and hope for, it is imperative for dancers to divide their time and studies between the mind and the body, and that both become the object of their application; but, unfortunately, all is given to the latter and nothing to the former. The legs are rarely guided by the brain, and, since intelligence and taste do not reside in the feet, one often goes astray.
-J.G. Noverre-
Applause lavished at a whim and without discernment, often proves the ruin of young people training for a stage career.
-J.G. Noverre-
I know that applause is food for the arts, but it ceases to be whole-some if administered indiscriminately; and the nutrition is so rich that, far from strengthening the constitution, it disturbs and enfeebles it. Stage beginners are similar to those children totally spoiled by the blind affection of their parents.
-J.G. Noverre-
The defect in wisdom and taste which exists among the majority of dancers is due to the bad education which they generally receive. They apply themselves only to the material side of their art, they learn to jump more or less high, they strive mechanically to execute a number of steps, and like children, who utter a great many words devoid of sense and relation, they execute many phrases of steps devoid of taste and grace.
-J.G. Noverre-
I should never conclude were I to speak to you of all the misfortunes which have their origin in the faulty carriage of the body. All these defects, mortifying for those who have contracted them, cannot be remedied except in their early stages. A habit born in childhood is strengthened in youth, becomes deeply rooted in adulthood and is incurable in old age.
-J.G. Noverre-
No matter the style, the farther one goes the more obstacles increase, and the more distant appears the object it is desired to attain. Again, the most strenuous labor affords the greatest artists but a disquieting gleam which only reveals their inadequacy, while the self-satisfied ignoramus surrounded by the deepest gloom flatters himself that he has nothing more to learn.
-J.G. Noverre-
It is not a question of skimming the surface of the art, it must be probed to its depths, for to seize upon superficial things only is to degenerate into mediocrity and obscurity.
-J.G. Noverre-
The defects born of habit are innumerable. I see every child occupied in some way in disarranging and disfiguring his physique; some displace the ankles through the habit they have contracted of standing on one leg only and playing, as it were, with the other; placing it in a position which though disagreeable and strained, does not fatigue them, because the softness of their tendons and muscles lend themselves to all kinds of movement.
-J.G. Noverre-
The mind of man is capable of anything-because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.
-Joseph Conrad-
I did not arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind.
-Albert Einstein-
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
-George Bernard Shaw-
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
-James Joyce-
The state of least excitation of consciousness is the field of all possibilities.
-Maharishi Mahesh Yogi-
The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing knowledge.
-Albert Einstein-
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
-Albert Einstein-
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the law of the universe will be simpler.
-H.D. Thoreau-
Each indecision brings its own delays and days are lost lamenting over lost days… What you can do or think you can do, begin it. For boldness has magic, power, and genius in it.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-
The game of life is the game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later, with astounding accuracy.
-Florence Shinn-
The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious.
-John Sculley-
Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.
-Mark Twain-
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life’s about creating yourself.
– George Bernard Shaw-
We do not have to become heroes overnight….Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.
-Eleanor Roosevelt-
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
-Eleanor Roosevelt-
I think the key is for women not to set any limits.
-Martina Navratilova-
Those who believe they can and those who believe they can’t are both right.
– Anonymous-
Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.
-Napoleon Hill-
Goals are dreams with deadlines.
-Diana Scharf Hunt-
Fairy Tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
-G.K. Chesterton-
Dream as if you’ll live forever, Live as if you’ll die today.
-James Dean-
Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about dancing in the rain!
-Anonymous-
If you don’t have a plan for yourself, you’ll be part of someone else’s.
-American Proverb-
Dancing is like life: it’s good to have a plan, but be prepared to improvise.
-Anonymous-
Attack life, it’s going to kill you anyway.
-Steven Coallier-
If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to put up with the rain.
-Dolly Parton-
Endurance is patience concentrated.
-Thomas Carlyle-
Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
-Robert Brault-
THE FOLLOWING ARE MORE LIKE WITTY T-SHIRT AND COFFEE MUG BLURBS…..
If it bends, it’s funny. If it breaks, it’s not funny.
You have never seen a real workout until you have seen a dancer practice.
Of course, I have an ATTITUDE. I’m a Dancer!
“Ballet. The Few. The Proud. The Pink.”
Dancers have the best BUNS!!
Dancers’ Attitudes Never Cease, Ever!
I brake for dancers.
Dance is Life. Everything else is just Details!
Ballet dancers always have a POINTE!
Dancers Turn Out Better!
If you got it, flaunt it! DANCE!
Those who hear not the music think the dancers mad.
Discover the pointe . . . DANCE!
Eat, Drink, Sleep, DANCE.
You wouldn’t understand: It’s a DANCE thing!
If I have to explain Dancing to you, you won’t get it.
Ballet. It’s Gotta Be The Shoes!
It’s Hard To Be Humble When You’re A Dancer!
DANCE is JOY. DANCE is LOVE. DANCE is what DREAMS are made of.
If you don’t have the attitude, WHY DANCE?
Don’t judge me until you have walked the world in my dance shoes.
Football players practice. DANCERS WORK!
Athletes dance. Everyone else just plays a game.
Dance is life. The rest is just rehearsal.
Ballet… nothing else matters!
If you don’t dance, no second glance!
Been there… Danced that…
To dance or not to dance? What a STUPID question!
If I can’t dance in heaven, let me live here forever.
Dancing gets on your brain and makes you crazy, but it’s a good crazy, like love.
It doesn’t matter where you are on the stage, just as long as you’re there.
You can dance anywhere, even if only in your heart.
If dance were easy, they’d call it figure skating.
Flexible people never get bent out of shape!!
Shoot for the moon, for even if you miss you will still be amongst the stars.
A dancer can live without food, water, and sleep, as long as they are able to dance.
God gave you toes so pointe them!
All the world’s a stage — so dance on it!
You can only perform as well as you do in practice.
The body may learn the steps, but only the spirit can dance!
Just shut up and DANCE!
Practice makes perfect!
If ballet was easy, then everyone would be doing it.
Dancing with the feet is one thing, but dancing with the heart is another.
You can’t make a pointe, if you don’t understand the details.
If you watch a game, it’s fun. If you play it, it’s recreation. If you work at it, it’s dance.
Why do I dance?…..Why do I breathe?
A poor dancer blames her shoes.
Dance isn’t just about fancy footwork. It requires grace, discipline, and major muscles.
I can’t. I have rehearsal!
Nice men marry dancers; real men become dancers!
Real men lift women.
If all the world’s a stage, I want better lighting!