Quotations About Dance
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Dancing is hard work, sometimes it is easy to get discouraged when working hard and not seeing any results. When this happens to me I like to read inspiring quotes by dancers who struggled and made it. Also the way they thought about dance and the place of dance in life opens my mind to new possibilities and some I just found thought provoking. Here I share some of my favorite ones, I will add more as I come accross them.
Latest quote added on 2/18/04: "Dancemeditation is to the Body what Dreaming is to the Mind." -- Dunya
"Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground."
"I did not choose to be a dancer, I was chosen."
"Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It's a miracle, and the dance... is a celebration of that miracle."
"Dance is the hidden language of the soul."
"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."
"There is always one person in the audience to whom you speak."
"Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion."
"Dance is another way of putting things. If it could be said in words, it would be; but outside of words, outside of painting, outside of sculpture, inside the body is an interior landscape which is revealed in movement."
"Being a dancer was an act of total commitment costing not less than everything." "I intend to work for this dance of the future. I do not know whether I have the necessary qualities; I may have neither genius nor talent nor temperament. But I know that I have a Will; and will and energy sometimes prove greater than either genius or talent or temperament."
"She is coming, the dancer of the future... the highest intelligence in the freest body!" "Dance is Emotion in Motion."
"The ideal dancer dances with complete heart and soul, with a total involvement, where every movement get its due and nothing is thrown away."
"There is a beauty in simple, clean execution, in using a movement in it's purest, simplest form, that transforms the dancer. There is a joy and grace in simplicity that is more powerful than any complex ornamentation. When there is no camouflage, no busy distraction, it is the dancer themselves that is revealed."
"The student phase is like childhood. It is beautiful, and if you don't have a childhood, adulthood can be pretty messed up. I have seen people jump into the professional arena too fast. They get jaded and look for the attention and money more than the art and enjoyment. Art is a gift, and when you open it, you need to share it. Do so with heart, for people who appreciate you and give you energy. ...Be a child in this dance for a long time and savor it. Don't think that because someone else is doing something, you have to do it. You have to be seasoned and thick skinned as a professional, so don't rush to get that way. Also, learn, learn, learn..Not just new steps, but how these dances came about and where they are from. Learn about the world."
"Believe in yourself and you can accomplish anything."
"I see dance being used as communication between body and soul, to express what is too deep to find for words."
"I also had a will that let me eliminate everything that stood in the way of my becoming the best dancer I could be. By a gradual process... I had invested every bit of my dreams, my hopes, my energies in defining myself as a dancer."
"The most essential thing in dance 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 be moments of dancing too..."
"Dance, when you're broken open.
"Dance as though no one is watching you,
"That which cannot be spoken can be sung, that which cannot be sung can be danced."
"No form of dance is permanent, no form of dance is definitive, ultimate... only the basic principle of dance is enduring, and out of it, like the cycle of nature itself, rises an endless succession of new springs out of old winters."
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