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
Dance, one of the oldest forms of artistic expression, requires only the human body for its realization. — Igor Youskevitch
My dance is a sacred poem in which each movement is a word and whose every word is underlined by music. The temple in which I dance can be vague or faithfully reproduced, for I am the temple. — Mata Hari
I’ve learned what ‘classical’ means. It means something that sings and dances through sheer joy of existence. — Gustav Holst
The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word. — Mata Hari
A divine dance appears in the soul and the body at the time of peace and union.Anyone can learn the dance, just listen to the music. — Rumi
Dance is not an exercise. Dance is an art. — Alicia Alonso
Dance is like wine; it matures with every performance. — Alarmel Valli
Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain. — Martha Graham
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
Dance is very, very old. With Louis XIV at Versailles is where ballet started. — Neve Campbell
Short Classical Dance Quotes
I believe dance is a manifestation and celebration of the tenacity of the human spirit. — Robert Battle
You cannot dance an arabesque in 'Swan Lake' and 'Nutcracker' the same way. — Natalia Makarova
Dance form is logical, but it is all in the realm of feeling, sensitivity and imagination. — Doris Humphrey
The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion. — Merce Cunningham
Dance is so important in the world. It needs no language. Our bodies speak a language of its own. — Ibrahim Farah
Dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music — Charles Baudelaire
Dancing: The Highest Intelligence in the Freest Body. — Isadora Duncan
The Dance: A minimum of explanation, a minimum of anecdotes - and a maximum of sensations. — Maurice Bejart
Classical Dance Image Quotes
If you stumble, make it part of the dance.
Ballet Class Quotes
When I miss class for one day, I know it. When I miss class for two days, my teacher knows it. When I miss class for three days, the audience knows it. — Rudolf Nureyev
If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it — Isadora Duncan
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
You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.
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! — Jiri Kylian
On the other hand, I think it is wonderful for everyone to take ballet classes, at any age. It gives you a discipline, it gives you a place to go. It gives you some control in your life. — Suzanne Farrell
Think positively; Exercise daily; Eat Healthy; Work Hard; Stay strong; Worry less; Dance more; Love often.
My first ballet class was on a basketball court. I'm in my gym clothes and my socks trying to do this thing called ballet. — Misty Copeland
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. — Marcia Siegel
I grew up with classical music when I was a ballet dancer. Now when I have to prepare an emotional scene, to cry or whatever, I listen to sonatas. Vivaldi and stuff. It's just beautiful to me. — Diane Kruger
Ballet Quotes
You can do anything you want, even if you are being told negative things.stay strong and find motivation. — Misty Copeland
The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations. — Jane Jacobs
In my ballets, woman is first. Men are consorts. God made men to sing the praises of women. They are not equal to men: They are better. — George Balanchine
There are shortcuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them. — Vicki Baum
I don't want people who want to dance; I want people who have to dance. — George Balanchine
Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays. — George Balanchine
Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, its about learning to dance with the rain
The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener. — George Balanchine
Master technique and then forget about it and be natural. — Anna Pavlova
I do everything the man does, only backwards and in high heels! — Ginger Rogers
Badminton is like ballet dancing. It requires a lot of control, strength, mind play and measured movement — Aamir Khan
Dance Class Quotes
In high school, I taught dance classes for 3-year-olds up to 16-year-olds, so between that and some bat mitzvah money, I saved up a pretty good nest egg to move to L.A. — Dianna Agron
When I was in New York after I left the Army, I studied for two years at the American Theater Wing, studied acting, which involved dance and fencing and speech classes and history of theater, all that. — James Earl Jones
There's a lot of good rappers in England at the moment. There's a lot of good dance acts. A lot of good, young guitar acts. I think a lot of groups came from that dole culture of the late 80's/early 90's - it's not as easy now. I think there's a dearth of working class bands. — Ian Brown
Optimist is someone who figures that taking a step backward after a step forward is not a disaster, it's more like a cha-cha.
You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice. — Martha Graham
My first show was when I was a high school freshman, but it was at the junior class dance. My older friend and bandmate booked it. — Frank Iero
Never stop moving, or you'll stop moving. I go to dance class every morning, and it's just good to stay strong; I like being healthy. — Liza Minnelli
Trust me, You can dance.
Someone told me about drama schools, and they seemed like mythological places - you can really go and be in drama classes all day? I inadvertently entered into this world where people wore bicycle clips and did song-and-dance routines in the corridors. — Nick Moran
I endured quite a few injuries when I was younger and had my first surgery on my foot when I was 15. But I love dancing. 'Anna Karenina' was great for me as it meant I could combine the two and I actually went back and did some classes. — Alicia Vikander
I was really into dancing, taking six classes a week, and my real dream was to be in a Broadway show. — Natalie Portman
I do take class because I still dance, and yes, I do slip into class with the Royal Ballet from time to time. — Deborah Bull
Ballet Teachers Quotes
Ballet found me. I was discovered by a teacher in middle school. I always danced, my whole life. I never had any training, never was exposed to seeing dance, but I always had something inside of me. — Misty Copeland
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
Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned. — George Balanchine
Take more chances, dance more dances.
Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. It's the rhythym of your life. — Jacques d'Amboise
I was called a bookish child. Mother sent me to a ballet teacher in Cincinnati when I was nine years old. I guess I was an awkward child and the family wanted me to be graceful. When I found out I liked to dance and people seemed to like to watch me, I was determined to go places. — Vera-Ellen
I have a sister who is a dancer and dance teacher. We grew up dancing together. I wanted to become a ballerina when I was a kid, so she and I were always at ballet conservatories and going to school with our hair in buns. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, It's about learning to dance in the rain.
I want to be a lawyer, a dancer, an actress, a mother, a wife, a childrens author, a distance runner, a poet, a pianist, a pet store owner, an astronaut, an environmental and humanitarian activist, a psychiatrist, a ballet teacher, and the first woman president. — Rachel Corrie
I started with ballet and then my cousin Sarah introduced me to her tap teachers. — Adam Garcia
I wasn't a ballet baby. My first dance class was in an outdoor pavilion when I was three. It was called 'creative movement.' The teacher gave us chiffon scarves in beautiful colors. She turned on some music and said, 'Now go dance.' So for me, dance has always been about self-expression. — Carrie Ann Inaba
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 dreams. — Albert Einstein
In point of substantial merit the law school belongs in the modern university no more than a school of fencing or dancing. — Thorstein Veblen
If there was a volcano under their feet, a Vesuvius that could erupt and bury this modern-day Pompeii at any moment, the best thing to do was dance on it. — Deborah Davis
No matter what, nobody can take away the dances you've already had.
There are times when the simple dignity of movementcan fulfill the function of a volume of words. — Doris Humphrey
Rock ’n roll is really swing with a modern name. It began on the levees and plantations, took in folk songs, and features blues and rhythm. It's the rhythm that gets to the kids – they're starved of music they can dance to, after all those years of crooners. — Alan Freed
Classic Van Halen made people want to dance and f**k. Modern Van Halen makes you want to drink milk and drive foreign cars. — David Lee Roth
Great leaders are willing to follow. Leadership is a dance, not a parade.
Modern physics had shown that the rhythm of creation and destruction is not only manifest in the turn of the seasons and in the birth and death of living creatures, but is also the very essence of inorganic matter. For modern physicists...Shiva's dance is the dance of subatomic matter. — Fritjof Capra
Modern dance isn't anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America. — Martha Graham
Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery - what it all means, the way the little bone near the ankle relates itself to the floor for a perfect stance, a perfect plie. — Martha Graham
I was used to dancing, but only when someone told you what to do. So in the nightclub I was all over the place, I combined everything. Street dance, modern dance, a bit of jazz and ballet, I was Twyla Tharp, I was Alvin Ailey, I was Michael Jackson. I didn't care, I was free. — Madonna Ciccone
Tap Dance Quotes
Do it big, do it right, and do it with style. — Fred Astaire
Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars. — Gustave Flaubert
I still get very excited when people say they fall in love. It doesn’t matter how old you are, falling in love is a beautiful thing. And I still act like I did when I was a teenager. I get fluttery and tap dance around. I’m never afraid of making funny faces or being completely goofy. — Cote de Pablo
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
On Saturday afternoons, there was a film, of course, and then we did about four shows between the films. And I would do a tap dance, a little military tap. — Barbara Cook
When people say you're doing something radical in rock or dance music, I'm not sure how special that is. What we do is so old-fashioned. It's like trying to do something innovative in tap-dancing. — Jonny Greenwood
I don't tap dance, and I don't think you can learn to tap dance in three weeks at my ripe old age. — Huey Lewis
As we tap into the deep sources of bodily wisdom through creative art expression,we dance the renewal, recreation, and healing of ourselves and our world. — Anna Halprin
My mother told me I was dancing before I was born. She could feel my toes tapping wildly inside her for months. — Ginger Rogers
Once you're on stage you can't go back, even when things go wrong people expect you to stay there and entertain them. When all else fails, you've got to try tap dancing. — Angus Young
Pointe Dancers Quotes
Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it. — Martha Graham
Technical perfection is insufficient. It is an orphan without the true soul of the dancer. — Sylvie Guillem
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 physical language of the body is so much more powerful than words. — Bill Irwin
I've reached a point where I'm comfortable in my own skin, and I do what I need to do, to feel good, but I'm built the way I am. The dancer's feet, the bruises on my legs, they're not going to go away. I think real girls have bruises. Tough chicks get bruised. They get dirty. And they have fun. — Nina Dobrev
Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion. — Agnes De Mille
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
There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep. — Martha Graham
On dancing on pointe: Why don't they just get taller girls? — Henny Youngman
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. — David Gere
Ballet Dancer Quotes
Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion. — Martha Graham
Dance for yourself. If someone understands, good. If not, no matter. — Louis Horst
Sing like no one is listening.
Love like you’ve never been hurt.
Dance like nobody’s watching,
and live like it’s heaven on earth. — Susanna Clarke
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters
Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop. — W. H. Auden
Dance is like life. It exists as you are flitting through it, and when it's over, it's done. — Jerome Robbins
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
Swan Lake is the most difficult thing to portray for a female ballet dancer; it really requires such specific qualities of articulation, agility, strength, and the arm work is something that takes a lot of training. — Benjamin Millepied
Dance every performance as if it were your last. — Erik Bruhn
When she goes about her kitchen duties, chopping, carving, mixing, whisking, she moves with the grace and precision of a ballet dancer, her fingers plying the food with the dexterity of a croupier. — Craig Claiborne
Dancers work and live from the inside. They drive themselves constantly producing a glow that lights not only themselves but audience after audience. — Murray Louis
Yeah, I always listen to both classic and newer folk-influenced music. Singer-songwriter, alternative music. I also listen to more experimental dance music. — Brad Delson
Indian classical dance is sustained by a profound philosophy. Form seeks to merge with the formless, motions seek to become a part of the motionless, and the dancing individual seeks to become one with the eternal dance of the cosmos. — Nita Ambani
And then you have the classical ballerinas, they're like sopranos. Applied to the dance. — Ninette de Valois
You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. — Jiddu Krishnamurti
I enjoy the freedom of modern dance as well as the constraints of classical dance. — Deborah Bull
Classical virtuosity is more than technique, line, proportion, and balance. It is as if the performer and spectator come together to hold in their hands a bird with a broken wing. The creature can be felt to stir, to struggle for freedom. Its life responds to human warmth; its wing might brush your check as it flies away. — Gelsey Kirkland
You cannot dance physically certain things. But look at tango dancers or flamenco or Japanese classical theater. You can, if you're smart enough and you collaborate with the right choreographers, you could really dance your age. — Mikhail Baryshnikov
In liberal democracy and anxious anarchy, the traditional classic dance, compact of aristocratic authority and absolute freedom in a necessity of order, has never been so promising as an independent expression as it is today. — Lincoln Kirstein
I wanted to give people - which is fairly bizarre considering my whole life is contemporary dance really - I wanted to give people a really fulfilling sense that they had seen a white classical ballet - in a very pure form. — Graeme Murphy
I think classical ballet dancers dance on pointe because they're simultaneously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies — Paulo Coelho
Learn at least two classic ballroom dances, at least one of them Latin. — Marilyn vos Savant
I think it's useful to experience other types of dance and other cultures, and the life of a classical dancer these days is certainly not all tutus! So experience of other dance forms is a good idea. — Deborah Bull
when dancing is right, the movement possesss a logic common to us all, an inevitability that takes it beyond the personal and egocentric and makes of it classical art. — Twyla Tharp
When I left the theater… I was thinking that I’d seen a classic of American dance. It confers a mythic dimension on ordinary aspects of our daily lives – it’s unfaked folk art. The dancers, crashing wave upon wave into those falls, have a happy insane spirit that recalls a unique moment in American life – the time we did the school play or we were ready to drown at a swimming meet. The last time most of us were happy in that way. — Arlene Croce
Having Alexei Ratmansky create a new Romeo and Juliet for The National Ballet of Canada to mark our 60th anniversary is a dream come true. His aesthetic -- steeped in the Russian school but open to contemporary sources -- is ideal for this work and for our company, which, with our classical heritage and our passion for the modern, is perfectly suited to his distinctive dance vision. — Karen Kain
There is a general decline of taste for classical dance,ce, which is neglected and this must be developed from the grassroots. There is so much of razzle-dazzle... that classical dance suffers. — Kanak Rele
If Balanchine had any secret, it was one that has endured through two hundred years of classical ballet. It is that dancing correctly in three dimensions, on the music, creates the fourth dimension of meaning. — Arlene Croce
I grew up as a dancer. I did tap, classical ballet, all of that. I did Indian dancing, or Bharata Natyam, classic temple dancing from Madras, originally. My mother always had the great idea that I should learn it. — Roselee Goldberg
I think differently, I think it's about reaching everybody on every different plane and every different level, and if I could remix the song and do a dance remix, that's great. If I could do a classical version, that'll be great too. It's all just about expression. — Deborah Cox
You put music in categories because you need to define a sound, but when you don't play it on your so-called radio stations that claim to be R&B or jazz or whatever... All music is dance music. But when people think of dance music, they think of techno or just house. Anything you can dance to is dance music. I don't care if it's classical, funk, salsa, reggae, calypso; it's all dance music. — Afrika Bambaataa
I grew up as a dancer, and music and dance are so closely tied, that in ballet class you're listening to all this classical music, and in modern class you're working with a live drummer. It was something that always made me feel really comfortable and I've had a connection to since the beginning. — Jillian Hervey
Being a fan of dance and a dancer, I love my classic dance movies. — Stephen Boss
I know a lot of choreographers prefer to do abstract dance and not be bothered with a story, but even when I'm asked to do classical ballet or a modern piece, I still want to tell a story. — Susan Stroman
I'm not classically trained or anything, but I'll rip up a dance floor. — Beau Mirchoff
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. — Antony Tudor
Do you know what I've learned? That although ecstasy is the ability to stand outside yourself, dance is a way of rising up into space, of discovering new dimensions while still remaining in touch with your body. When you dance, the spiritual world and the real world manage to coexist quite happily. I think classical ballet dancers dance on pointe because they're simultaneously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies. — Paulo Coelho
Obviously neither 'American Idol' nor 'Dancing With the Stars' is a variety show in the classic sense, but the way they incorporate elements of drama, comedy and suspense is moderately ingenious. — Tom Shales
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of classical dance quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about classical dance to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of classical dance quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.