AN ODE TO ALL DANCERS
The competition lasts for moments
Though the training has taken years
It wasn't the winning alone that
Was worth all the tears
The applause will be forgotten
The prize will be misplaced
But the long hard hours of practice
Will never be a waste
For in trying to win, you build a skill
You learn that winning depends on will
So any new challenge you've just begun
Put forth your best and
You've already won
We dance for laughter
we dance for tears
we dance for madness
we dance for fears
we dance for hopes
we dance for screams
we are the dancers,
we create the dreamsYou can dance anywhere
even if only in your heartYou know you're dancing when
tears of pain and happiness
blend in with your sweatDancers are the instruments, like
a piano the choreographer plays
George BalanchineDancing with the feet is one thing,
but dancing with the heart is anotherDance not just with your feet, but also
with your arms and eyes and your
head and your entire body
Dance exists between heaven
and earth in a place so profound...
that only the soul can find itThe smile is the dance of the face,
and the dance is the smile of the limbs
F. Leslie ClendenenO body swayed to music
O brightening glance
How can we know the
dancer from the dance?
W.B. YeatsTo dance or not to dance... ?
silly question! Willem WikkelspiesYour feet may know the steps
but only your soul can truly danceWhat’s Relativity?
Put your hand on a hot stove for a
minute, and it seems like an hour.
Dance with a pretty girl for an hour,
and it seems like a minute.
That's relativity.
Albert EinsteinWith the pain of practising
comes the glory of winningPractice doesn't make perfect...
it makes permanent!Of course I have an ATTITUDE,
I'm a dancer!
If we cannot bring ourselves to dance,
we become sick. Dancing heals
MARION C. GARRETTYLove is a lot like dancing - you just
surrender to the musicEvery day I count wasted in which
there has been no dancing
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900)I don't want people who want to dance
I want people who have to dance
GEORGE BALANCHINE (1904 - 1983)Friedrich Nietzsche thought that to grow
beyond his ordinariness, man needed that inner lightness which is the lightness of the dancer
WALTER SORRELLAny problem in the world
can be solved by dancing
James BrownWhen Adelai Stevenson announced his retirement in 1965, he was asked what he would like to do with all his spare time: "I would like," said the two-time U.S. Presidential candidate, "to spend my days sitting under a tree drinking wine and watching people dance."
Dancing is a vertical expression
of a horizontal desireThe forms of tango are like stages of a
marriage. The American tango is like
the beginning of a love affair, when
you're both very romantic and on your
best behavior. The Argentine tango is
when you're in the heat of things and all
kinds of emotions are flying: passion,
anger, humor. The International tango
is like the end of the marriage, when
you're staying together for the sake
of the childrenDancing is a sweat job... When you're experimenting you have to try so many
things before you choose what you want,
and you may go days getting nothing but exhaustion. It takes time to get a dance
right, to create something memorable
Fred Astaire (1899-1987)
Tango bubbled up from the brothels and
low-life, so when I see scruffy young people dancing tango in gym shoes and jeans,
I think that's great.
Luis Longhi, Tango Musician.To dance, above all, is to enter into the
motions of life. It is an action, a movement,
a process. The dance of life is not so much a metaphor as a fact; to dance is to know
oneself alone and to celebrate it
Sherman PaulWhen a man and woman understand each
other dancing, simply carrying the beat, dancing for three minutes to a music called tango,
it's the closest thing to an orgasm but
sensual rather than erotic.
Juan Carlos Copes, Star of the 1985 Broadway hit, Tango Argentino.Dance is Fun! It lifts the spirit, strengthens
the body and stimulates the mindDancing is the last word in life ...
in dancing one draws nearer to oneselfTo me dance represents life - and because
life is a rhythm, that of the heartbeat - dance
is inseparable from rhythm. It interprets our existence, to the extent that it represents
all the rhythms, all the human pulsations
Maurice Béjart, b 1927In the Middle East, people dance at circumcisions; in Africa, they dance at funerals; in Puerto Rico, they dance at baptisms; and virtually everyone dances at weddings. There
are also rites of passage that are not tied to a particular time and place: whenever and wherever young people seek each other out
forcompanionship, music and dancing
are almostalways part of the scene
GERALD JONAS
"For the Indian, dance is a personal form of prayer. When the Eagle Dancer puts on his costume, when he begins to dance to the
music, he doesn't simply perform it; he
actually becomes the eagle. The dancer
is virtually inseparable from the dance
JAMAKE HIGHWATERSo esteemed was dance that it was accepted practice for statesmen, generals, philosophers, and other outstanding Greeks of the Periclean Age to perform solo dances before audiences of many thousands, on important public occasions."
RICHARD KRAUSThe subject matter of African dance is all-inclusive of every activity between birth
and death. The seed which trembles to be born, the first breath of life, the growth, the struggle for existence, the reaching beyond the everyday
into the realm of the soul, the glimpsing of the
Great Divine, the ecstasy and sorrow which is
life, and then the path back to the earth - this
is the dance
PEARL FRIMUS, b. 1919The fact that there has always been dance compels us to accept it as an old and deeply rooted human activity whose foundations reside in the nature of being human. It will continue as long as the rhythmic flow of energy operates, and until humans cease to respond to the forces of life and the universe. As long as there is
life, there will be dance."
MARGARET N. H'DOUBIERMan dances. After the activities that secure
to primitive peoples the material necessities,
food and shelter, the dance comes first. It is
the earliest outlet for emotion and the
beginning of the arts....
SHELDOH CHENEY
On no occasion in the life of primitive peoples could the dance be dispensed with. Birth, circumcision, and the consecration of maidens, marriage and death, planting and harvest, the celebration of chieftains, hunting, war and
feasts, the changes of the moon and sickness - for all of these the dance is needed
CURT SACHSNot only did drama as such - the art of
which action is a pivotal material - arise out of primitive dance... Music, ttoo, which can hardly be dissociated from the theatre's beginnings, traces its ancestry to the sounds made to accentuate the primitive dance rhythm, the stamping of feet and clapping of hands, the shaking of rattles, the beating of drums and sticks. Dance, then, is the great mother of the arts."
SHELDOH CHENEYEvery day I count wasted in which there
has been no dancing
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844 - 1900)
For every prima ballerina assoluta, there
are several dozen members of the corps.
But if you want to dance you don't care if
you never even get to be a cygnet
JESSE O'NEILLA child sings before it speaks, dances
almost before it walks. Music is in our
hearts from the beginning
FAMELA BROWNTo dance is to gue oneself up
to the rhythms of all life
DR. MAYA V. FATELWhat is the first thing that we can imagine that each individual experiences. A movement when you're swishing around inside a mummy's tummy and a heartbeat and a pulse and that's why the basic beat is a one beat with an up beat. And a rock 'n' roll and a marching. It is the most basic beat and now baby is born and what happens to baby. Baby goes aagh, aagh and rocks in time. It moves in time and makes a sound in time. It is singing and dancing. That's what it's doing
TACQUES D'AMBOISETo me dance represents life - and because life
is a rhythm, that of the heartbeat - dance is inseparable from rhythm. It intterprets our existence, to the extent that it represents
all the rhythms, all the human pulsations
MAURICE SWART
Dancing is as great mystery as painting
or drama. It serves no obvious purpose -
yet it is as much a part of human life
as food gathering and sleep
DR. MAYA V. FATELPeople dance, as they have always danced,
to celebrate good news. They dance on state occasions, to honour a guest, pay court to someone powerful, or simply to demonstrate their social standing. They dance to encourage
a sporting team and to exhibit the best and
most beautiful in their community. They dance
to express their individuality, and for physical contact with the opposite sex.... Performed alone, dance is both a physical and emotional
form of release. Dance has been used in all
these ways for thousands of year
PETER BUCKMANBut if we look for proof, the popularity of dancing can best be judged by the huge literature of its condemnation. Many preachers would claim that dancing resulted in 'uncleane kyssinges, clippynges and other unhonest handelynges'.
And there was not one friar or itinerant preacher who would not have depicted dancers as being struck by lightning, consumed by heavenly fire,
or cursed to dance until they fell dead
WALTER SORRELL
The miracle of dance is the drawing of strength from the very act of dancing itself, living off it, and being nourished by it. As a long day of rehearsal passes the energy drawn from the dance seems to grow until the accumulated vitality is offered to the evening audience
as an incomparable gift
DONALD HAMILTON FRASERWe have a different bodily structure than most
humans. Our spirits, our souls, our love reside
totally in our bodies, in our toes and knees and
hips and vertebrae and necks and elbows and
fingertips. Our faces are painted on. We draw
black lines for eyes, red circles for cheekbones and ovals for a mouth
TONI BENTLEY"...the practice costumes, which included
many-coloured pullovers - mostly in a state of
disrepair - worn over scant tunics and whatever
coloured tights happened to be to hand. The hair
was worn back from the ears and kept in place
by nets and bandeaux. Ubiquitous thighs were encased in knitted pullovers. Feet, that looked so dainty on the stage, appeared long and bony in darned pink satin ballet shoes. Save possibly in the bosom of a mother, ecstasy is not one of the emotions that is evoked by the spectacle
of a dancer working in class."
CARYL BRAHMS AND S. J. SIMON,
from A Bullet in the BalletDancing is an art that ingrains on the soul. It is with you every moment, even after you give it up. It is with you every moment of your day and night. It is an art that expresses itself in how you walk, how you eat, how you make love, and how you do nothing. It is the art of the body, and as long as a dancer possesses a body, he or she feels the call of expression in dancer's terms
SHIRLEY MACLAINE
from Dancing in the Light"It is an amazing thing, this ballet. Those who
once allow themselves to come within its grasp
never escape. The boy and girl who entered the
Imperial schools while still children remain as true to it in their old age as ever they were.
The great ones, like Fokine, make their last bow while the breath of creation is still fierce in them. It is something that claims its devotees utterly. It makes beauty of the stuff of legends and becomes itself the breeding-place oflegends."
GEORGE BORODIN,
from This Thing Called Ballet
The small child at dancmg class may never become a professional dancer - but the courtesies and disciplines, as well as the joy
in movement, will touch her forever
HELEN THOMSONTo sing well and to dance well is
to be well-educated
PLATO (c. 428 - c. 348 B.C.)"A nondescript teacher gives a child the chance to hear applause for the first time, at the local church hall. A good teacher gives a child the ability to hear music with its whole body and to give it visible form."
PAM BROWNDarling, could we sit this one out,
your feet are killin me"If all children in every school from their
entrance until their graduation ... were
given the opportunity to experience dance
as a creative art, and if their dancing kept
pace with their developing physical, mental,
and spiritual needs, the enrichment of their
adult life might reach beyond any results
we can now contemplate."
IMARGARET N. H'DOUBLER"The value of the dance, its greatest value,is in the 'intangibles'. Success in the dance cannot be measured by a tape, weighed on scales, or timed with a stopwatch. It demands an awareness and sensitivity in the dancer's soul and in the soul of
the beholder who partakes, vicariously, empathetically, in the dance."
TED SHAWN
"All that is important is this one moment
in movement. Make the moment important,
vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip
away unnoticed and unused."
MARTHA GRAHAM
(1893 - 1992)"Dancing is the last word in life ...
in dancing one draws nearer to oneself."
JEAN DUBUFFET
(1901 - 1985)"The real reason I dance is
because I want to explode."
BILL EVANS"Music is an immediate, emotional, the most powerful bang. There's a conduit from those vibrations in the atmosphere that go through
the ear, through the mind, the chemistry
through emotions to our heart. But the same
with gestures. Gesture is a communication
form that is in our bones stronger than the content of words and the meaning of words... Every time I dance I have a high. I mean every time I danced, it was the whole world was the stage and I was in control of it and there was a form and a ritual and yet it was spontaneous and life didn't matter after that or before. The whole instant was all the globe in the universe at the moment. Bang. At that moment. The exhilaration after would go on constant, still in the morning and the next day and you're all excited and yet you never know if you can perform again. Each performance is your closing night and it's your opening night."
JACQUES D'AMBOISE"When you perform, you are our of yourself larger and more potent, more beautiful. You
are for minutes heroic. This is power. This is glory on earth. And it is yours nightly."
AGNES DE MILLE"His [the dancer's] body is simply the luminous
manifestation of his soul... This is the truly creative dancer, natural but not imitative, speaking in movement out of himself and
out of something greater than all selves."
ISADORA DUNCAN (1878 - 1927)
"Dancers have a direct connection to the heavens and the gods - Balanchine and Stravinsky receive their talents and visions from God, and we as their instruments interpret those visions formortal men. We are their servants. We are creative in the same way that the paint in the pot is creative. We are the means to the end. We are essential, and we are on display. We receive the applause. Alone we are incapable and stationary.""Norhing has ever taken its [ballet's] place for
disciplinary training. There is no technique in
any other style of dancing that is so valuable
for producing exactitude, precision, sense of
form and sense of line."
TED SHAWN (1891- 1972)"To enter the School of the Imperial Ballet is to enter a convent whence frivolity is banned, and where merciless discipline reigns."
ANNA FAVLOVA (1881 - 1931)"Ballet's image ofperfection 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"Someone once said to me that dancers work
as hard as policemen: always alert, always tense. But you see, policemen don't have to
be beautiful at the same time!"
GEORGE BALANCHINE
(1904 - 1983)
"The accomplished dancer is an instrument of precision, and he is forced to undergo rigorous daily exercise to avoid lapsing into his original, purely human state. His whole being becomes imbued with that same unity, that same conformity with its ultimate aim that constitutes the arresting beauty of a finished aeroplane, where every detail, as well as the general effect, expresses one supreme object - that of speed. But where the aeroplane iis conceived in a utilitarian sense - the idea of beauty happening
to superimpose itself upon it - the constant transfiguration, as you might call it, of
the classic dancer from the ordinary to the ideal is the result of a disinterested will for perfection, an unquenchable thirst to surpass himself.
Thus it is that an exalted aim transforms his mechanical effort into an aesthetic phenomenon.
You may ask whether I am suggesting that the
dancer is a machine! Most certainly - a machine
for manufacturing beauty - if it is any way possible to conceive of a machine that in itself is a living, breathing thing, susceptible of the most exquisite emotions."
A. LEVINSON"Their 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 (1893 - 1992)"Dance can give the inarticulate a voice."
FAMELA BROWN 1928"All there is to be said for work as opposed to dancing is that it is so much easier."
HEYWOOD BROWN, from Pieces of Hate"...spectators sometimes sat in the theaters for whole days, watching the dancers almost as if hypnotized; they thought of the dancers as virtually divine, and Seneca calls the craze for their performance 'a disease' - Morbus. Women swooned, high officials of the state hung on every move, and Roman emperors summoned the dancers for command performances...."
LILLIAN B. LAWLER, 1964
"But the people could not help dancing. Since
it was a burst of running, skipping, and
jumping, disharmonious, it often reached
riotous proportions at the threshold of the churches. During the years of the plague such dancing was particularly wild, often reaching a point of hysterical gaiety, as if the people would have liked to trick death or laugh its frightening sight away. In an often cited game they played, someone would suddenly throw himself or herself to the ground and act dead, while the others would dance around in the manner of mock mourning. If it was a man, he would be
kissed back to life by the women, whereupon
a round dance followed. They were playing
'life and death' like a children's game,
with a child's mentality..."
WALTER SORRELL"I here was simply from this quite early
age the awareness that the only thing
I wanted was to dance."
RUDOLF NUREYEV
(1939 - 1993)"When I was younger and I would hear music, no
matter what type of music it was, I would start
choreographing in my mind. I would envision, I would see people dancing and I thought everyone did this, you know, I didn't realize that this was something that some people do, but the majority of people don't do that. You know, I'd hear music, but no matter what it was, if it was jazz, I'd find myself tapping and listening and seeing little rhythms or if it was ballet, I'd find myself, you know, envisioning a pas de deux, you know. The funniest thing as a child, I had my G. I. Joe and I used to make my G. I. Joe dance."
GREGG BURGE
Ballet is not technique, not a way of doing
things, but a means of expression that
comes perhaps more closely to the
inner language of man than any other"To dance is to express oneself. To dance
ballet is to use oneself to express
something beyond oneself.""Her [Martha Graham's] dance purpose is to give
physical substance to things felt, to lamentation, to celebration, to hate, to passion, to the experience of 'frontier', to underlying passions, dreams, fears and tragedies... to reveal in
solid dance architecture the architecture
of the inner man.""Then come the lights, loudly painted from the front of the theater. You realize that every nuance of your face and body will be visible. The pink jells leave your skin with a silky glow. The spotlight following you burns through your eyes. The bumper lights stage right and left add dimensional color to your arms and legs.
You can see absolutely no one in the audience.
It is alienatingly black. Then you realize it is
all up to you. You are a performer. You forget everything you ever learned. You forget the intricate process of technique. You forget your anxieties and your pain. You even forget who you are. You become one with the music, the lights, and the collective spirit of the audience. You know vou are there to help uplift them. They want to feel better about themselves and each other. Then they react. Their generously communal applause means they like you - love you even. They send you energy and you send it back. You participate with each other. And the cycle continues. You leap, soar, turn, extend, and bend. They clap, yell, whistle, stomp, and laugh. You acknowledge their appreciation for what
they see and give them more. And so it goes."
SHIRLEY MACLAINE 1934
from Dancing in the Light"The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie."
AGNES DE MILLE
I see the dance being used as a means of
communication between soul and soul - to express what is too deep, too fine for words"To dance at all is to confront oneself. It is the art of honesty. You are completely exposed when you dance. Your physical health is exposed. Your self-image is exposed. Your psychological health is exposed... It is impossible to dance out of the side of your mouth. You tell the truth when you dance. If you lie, you hurt yourself."
SHIRLEY MACLAINE 1934For me, dance is a nutrient, you know, it's something that I need, it's something like, you know, the air we breathe, the food we eat.
These are things, these are necessities.
These are things that we need for survival.
For me, dance is a nutrient. It's my nourishment."
GREGG BURGE"If we cannot bring ourselves to dance,
we become sick. Dancing heals."
M. GARRETTY 1917I don't want people who want to dance,
I want people who have to dance"Friedrich Nietzsche thought that to grow beyond his ordinariness, man needed that inner lightness which is the lightness of the dancer."
WALTER SORRELLThe essence of all art is to have
pleasure in giving pleasure"To live and to laugh require a reason. Bur dancing is so close to one's guts that it has no reason and yet it needs none; it's physical, and as a source of good cheer it is endless."
TONI BENTLEY
When you start dancing and you feel cool, you feel like the whole world belongs to youDance for yourself. If someone else understands, good. If not, no matter. Go right on doing
what interests you, and do it until it stops interesting you"One should dance because the soul dances. Indeed, when one thinks of it, what are any
real things but dances! I mean the only realities - moments of joy, acts of pleasure, deeds of kindness. Even the long silences, the deep quietness of serene souls, are dances; that
is why they seem so motionless."
HOLBROOK JACKSON (1874 - 1948)"...this 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 (1859 - 1999),
from The Dance of Life, 1923"It is what I've always wanted to do - to show
the laughing, the fun, the appetite, all of it through dance."
MARTHA GRAHAM (1893 - 1992)"If you seek the real source of the dance - if you go to nature, we find that the dance of the future is the dance of the past, the dance of eternity, and has been and will always be the same."
ISADORA DUNCAN"Then look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor,
the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life."
MARTHA GRAHAM (1893 - 1992),It's [dance] your pulse, it's your heartbeat, it's your breathing. It's the rhythms of your life. It's the expression in time and movemem of happiness and joy and sadness and energy. It's
a venting of energy. It's extraordinary, and that's common to all the cultures and it's common
to all individuals
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters.
Dance, dance, dance till you dropThe happiest dance I ever attended was when I found myself abandoned with a small, plump, teddy bear of a man. He couldn't dance either.
Suddenly, a wonderful, desperate madness
came over us. Like non-swimmers plunging into
a fast-flowing river, we took to the floor. We had no idea what we were supposed to be doing, but held on doggedly and walked in an approximation of the rhythm in the general direction taken by everyone else. We 'danced' until we were exhaustedOn with the dance! let joy be unconfincd;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet 'O chase the glowing Hours with flying feet.
LORD BYRON (1788 - 1824)If we can think, feel, and move, we can dance
You can dance anywhere and you can
dance in your mind, in your heartThere is room in dance for everyone - from walking to music in someone's arms to the
Rose Adagio"And what do you think is your ultimate goal?"
"I should think a nice little dance in heaven."