Quotes, Comments and Collections

The dance artist is a body poet.

A practice of efficient selfishness is functional for happiness.

It takes time (and patience) to be Human, and time is a luxury.




and here are some other people's quotes so that I will know where to find them. (I found them when I 'googled' the 1st sentence above, and this is one of the links that came up):

"To those of us with real understanding, dancing is the only pure art form!" — Snoopy

"When I dance, the sun sails safely through the night; When I dance, the future is formed by my feet; When I dance,the stars move through the heavens; When I dance, Venus shimmers the desert; When I dance, dust becomes silver, stones are made of gold!" — Cosi Fabian

"You have nothing to dance about until you are over the age of 30." — Bert Balladine

"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

"It takes an athlete to dance, but an artist to be a dancer." — Shanna LaFleur

"The dance is a poem of which each movement is a world." — Mata Hari

"I want women to be liberated and still be able to have a nice ass and shake it." — Shirley MacLaine

"If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it." — Isadora Duncan

"The dancer's body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul." — Isadora Duncan

"My motto - sans limites." — Isadora Duncan

"The real American type can never be a ballet dancer. The legs are too long, the body too supple and the spirit too free for this school of affected grace and toe walking." — Isadora Duncan

"Dance is the hidden language of the soul of the body." — Martha Graham

"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 life I have danced for those ten." — Ruth St Denis

"Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired." — Martha Graham

"The body is a sacred garment." — Martha Graham

"The only sin is mediocrity." — Martha Graham

"We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God." — Martha Graham

"The body says what words cannot." — Martha Graham

"The body never lies" — Martha Graham

"Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart." — Martha Graham

"No one can arrive from being talented alone, work transforms talent into genius." — Anna Pavlova

"So be encouraged and dedicate yourself to your dream and if your dream should come my way one day then we will dance upon the boards of life." — Ben Vereen

"Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music." — Angela Monet

"Without music, life would be a mistake… I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance." — Friedrich Nietzsche

"Dancing: The vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalized by music." — George Bernard Shaw

"I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself." — Mikhail Baryshnikov

"I don't want people who want to dance; I want people who have to dance" — George Balanchine

"And let that day be lost to us on which we did not dance once! And let that wisdom be false to us that brought no laughter with it!" — Friedrich Nietzsche

"There was a star danced, and under that was I born." — William Shakespeare

"The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie." — Agnes De Mille

"Never give a sword to a man who can't dance." — Confucius

"In life as in dance: Grace glides on blistered feet" — Alice Abrams

"All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing." — Moliere

"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life." — Unattributed

"You don't stop dancing from growing old, you grow old from stopping to dance" — Unattributed

"Wives are people who feel they don't dance enough" — Groucho Marx

"With time, even a bear can learn to dance" — Yiddish Proverb

"Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?" — Lewis Carroll

"Who can tell the dancer from the dance?" — William Butler Yeats

"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

"When you do dance, I wish you a wave o' the sea, that you might ever do nothing but that" — William Shakespeare

"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." — Unattributed

"Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself." — Havelock Ellis

"Dance is the only art wherein we ourselves are the stuff in which it is made." — Unattributed

"To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak" — Indian Proverb

"If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance" — Unattributed

"Dancing is the poetry of the foot." — John Dryden

"The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing" — James Brown

"To dance is to be in tune with the steps of life." — Sasha Azevedo

"What's important is that I'm working with very talented young people." — Maria Tallchief

"If you don't do your dance, who will?" — Gabrielle Roth

"The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going beyond them to the impossible." — Arthur C Clarke

"When the music changes, so does the dance." — African proverb

"Sex in a dance is in the eyes of the beholder. I never thought my dances sexy. I suppose that's because I see myself with my face washed, and to me I look like a rabbit." — Gwen Verdon

The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.


It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.


I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.


I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.


It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.


I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”


It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.


It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.


It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.


I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.