DANCING QUOTES

We had so many dance quotes that we needed to split them up into two pages of dancing quotes. Here are some more famous dance quotes, as well as thoughts and observations on dance and dancing.

"To dance is to be yourself.
Larger, more beautiful, more powerful.
This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking."
Agnes De Mille

"It's what I always wanted to do,
to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance."
Martha Graham

"A child sings before it speaks,
dances almost before it walks.
Music is in our hearts from the beginning."
Pamela Brown

"I see dance being used as communication between body and soul,
to express what is too deep to find for words."
Ruth St. Denis

"While I dance I can not judge,
I can not hate,
I can not separate myself from life.
I can only be joyful and whole.
This is why I dance."
Hans Bos

"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

"Technical perfection is insufficient.
It is an orphan without the true soul of a dancer."
Sylvie Guillium

"We should consider everyday lost in which we don't dance."
Neitzsche

"I'm dancing to the music of the madness inside me."
George C. Wolfe

"I danced from the moment I could stand."
Anna Pavlova

"Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired."
Martha Graham

"Dance is the only art in which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made."
Ted Shawn

"If you want to dance seriously, do.
You must think about it day and night,
dream about it, - desire it."
Christa Justus

“You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled,
then something has been lost.”
Martha Graham

“Life may not be the party that we hoped for…
But while we’re here, we should dance.”
Author Unknown

”The body says what words cannot.”
Martha Graham

"Dancing is moving to the music without stepping on anyone's toes,
pretty much the same as life."
Robert Brault

"I don't want life to imitate art.
I want life to be art."
Carrie Fisher

"Dancers are among the most passionate and dedicated of artists
and rarely take their work for granted."

"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."
Jaques D'ambroise

"I don't want dancers who want to dance.
I want dancers who have to dance."
George Balanchine

"Dance - an art form.
The body - an instrument.
Learn to play the instrument and master the art form."
Debbie Dee

"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

"Thousands of emotions well up inside me through out the day.
They are released when I dance."
Abraham Lincony

"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

"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 Jes

"The Dancer believes that his art has something to say
which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing...
there are times when the simple dignity of movement
can fulfill the function of a volume of words.
There are movements which impinge upon the nerves
with a strength that is incomparable,
for movement has the power to stir the senses and emotions, unique in itself.
This is the dancer's justification for being,
and his reason for searching further for deeper aspects of his art."
Doris Humphrey, 1937

"Artists lead unglamorous daily lives of discipline and routine, but their work is full of passion.
Each has a vision and feels responsibility to that vision."
Merryl Brockway

"Dancers are an admirable bunch of people.
The way they work. The stress is extraordinary.
It's a difficult career. I think it's hellish;
the fact that they are over the hill as they're emotionally maturing.
That calls for a terrific strength of character."
Lady D. MacMillan

"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."

"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

"Ballet technique is arbitrary and very difficult.
It never becomes easy - it becomes possible.
The effort involved in making a dancer's body is so long and relentless,
in many instances painful, the effort to maintain the technique so grueling
that unless a certain satisfaction is derived from the disciplining and the punishing,
the pace could not be maintained."
Agnes de Mille

"The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion,
the steadfast and willing devotion to the labor that makes the classwork 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 next time you look into the mirror,
just look at the way the ears rest next to the head;
look at the way the hairline grows;
think of all the little bones in your wrist.
It is a miracle.
And the dance is a celebration of that miracle."
Martha Graham

"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

"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

"Consciousness expresses itself through creation.
This world we live in is the dance of the creator.
Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on.
On many an occasion, when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred.
In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists.
I become the stars and the moon.
I become the lover and the beloved.
I become the victor and the vanquished.
I become the master and the slave.
I become the singer and the song.
I become the knower and the known.
I keep on dancing and then, it is the eternal dance of creation.
The creator and the creation merge into one wholeness of joy.
I keep on dancing— until there is only. . .the dance."
Michael Jackson 1992

"It may be possible to do without dancing entirely.
Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind;
but when a beginning is made -- when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt -
it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more. "
Jane Austen