Dance, one of the oldest forms of artistic expression, requires only the human body for its realization. — Igor Youskevitch
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
I believe dance is a manifestation and celebration of the tenacity of the human spirit. — Robert Battle
The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word. — Mata Hari
The dance is strong magic. The body can fly without wings. It can sing without voice. The dance is strong magic. The dance is life. — Pearl Primus
Dance form is logical, but it is all in the realm of feeling, sensitivity and imagination. — Doris Humphrey
Dance is an ephemeral, a fleeting art. To describe this momentum, every movement on stage, in words is virtually impossible. — Mikhail Baryshnikov
The world of dance is a natural world from which civilization has divorced many of us by making it appear remote - something reserved for the few who have a special talent. — Margot Fonteyn
Dance is so important in the world. It needs no language. Our bodies speak a language of its own. — Ibrahim Farah
Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain. — Martha Graham
Dance is for everybody. I believe that the dance came from the people and that it should always be delivered back to the people. — Alvin Ailey
What does dance give you? The freedom to be who you are and do what you want to do. — Arthur Mitchell
It was a tradition to represent a dancer frozen in a chosen position, like a snapshot. I broke away from this tradition by superimposing postures, blending light and motion and scrambling the planes. — Sonia Delaunay
Short Modern Dance Quotes
Ballet.something pure in this crazy world — Misty Copeland
Dancing: The Highest Intelligence in the Freest Body. — Isadora Duncan
Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made. — Ted Shawn
Dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music — Charles Baudelaire
Dance is like wine; it matures with every performance. — Alarmel Valli
Dance is not an exercise. Dance is an art. — Alicia Alonso
Dance when you're perfectly free. — Rumi
Movement is the universal language of personal freedom. — Louis Chevrolet
The Dance: A minimum of explanation, a minimum of anecdotes - and a maximum of sensations. — Maurice Bejart
Neckties satisfy modern man's desire to dress in art. — Harry Anderson
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
You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.
It was not very easy for a woman to impose herself as a modern artist in Germany… Most of our male colleagues continued for a long time to look upon us as charming and gifted amateurs, denying us implicitly any real professional status. — Hannah Hoch
I really like the city of Vienna. I like its art, its music and its architecture. In short, I like the culture that Vienna represents. What really captures me is the period around 1900 - the time of Freud, Schnitzler and Klimt. This is the period in which the modern view of mind was born. — Eric Kandel
Beauty or beast, the modern skyscraper is a major force with a strong magnetic field. It draws into its physical being all of the factors that propel and characterize modern civilization. The skyscraper is the point where art and the city meet. — Ada Louise Huxtable
Contemporary Art Quotes
If Graffiti is art and art is a crime then how come piccaso never done time? — Melvin Glover
My work seen in its totality is a statement about the integration of the contemporary artist into an industrial society. — Herbert Bayer
The task of cinema or any other art form is not to translate hidden messages of the unconscious soul into art but to experiment with the effects contemporary technical devices have on nerves, minds, or souls. — Maya Deren
Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, its about learning to dance with the rain
Graffiti writers will never stop. They'll just evolve. It's interesting what ideas people come up with and how it all extends forward. — Ben Eine
For me it's very important to turn Kiev into one of the main centers of contemporary art in the world. There is New York. There's London. And there will be Kiev. Everyone will come and say, 'Wow! — Victor Pinchuk
A wall is a very big weapon. It's one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with. — Banksy
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.
I especially like to collect contemporary art. — Yusaku Maezawa
I began collecting artwork as a way to help young artists to promote their work as well as to increase awareness of contemporary art among the younger generation. — Yusaku Maezawa
I didn't want to make 'high' art, I had no interest in using paint, I wanted to find something that anyone could relate to without knowing about contemporary art. I wasn't thinking in terms of precious prints or archival quality; I didn't want the work to seem like a commodity. — Cindy Sherman
New materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new ideas. — Sol LeWitt
Modern Culture Quotes
The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. — Luther Standing Bear
One needs solitude and quiet to think. The cacophony of modern culture is designed to make that impossible. — Chris Hedges
Perhaps these ancient observatories like Stonehenge perennially impress modern people because modern people have no idea how the Sun, Moon, or stars move. We are too busy watching evening television to care what's going on in the sky. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
Trust me, You can dance.
The Church cannot be content to live in its stained-glass house and throw stones through the picture window of modern culture. — Robert McAfee Brown
The equilibrium you admire in me is an unstable one, difficult to maintain. My inner life was split early between the call of the Ancestors and the call of Europe, between the exigencies of black-African culture and those of modern life. — Leopold Sedar Senghor
Forty-hour workweeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. — Naval Ravikant
Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library. — Luther Standing Bear
I love and admire the American culture and the American dream. I learnt so many things about the American shoe industry and marketing strategies. I caught the secrets of American casual wear, that is elegant and wearable, retro and modern, and mixed it with an Italian touch, luxurious and handmade. — Diego Della Valle
Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn't really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. — Christopher Nolan
As a culture, working-class white Americans like myself had no heroes. We loved the military but had no George S. Patton figure in the modern army. I doubt my neighbors could even name a high-ranking military officer. — James David Vance
Classical Dance Quotes
Dance every performance as if it were your last. — Erik Bruhn
I’ve learned what ‘classical’ means. It means something that sings and dances through sheer joy of existence. — Gustav Holst
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
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
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
Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, It's about learning to dance in the rain.
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
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
Modern Architecture Quotes
Contemporary architects tend to impose modernity on something. There is a certain concern for history but it’s not very deep. I understand that time has changed, we have evolved. But I don’t want to forget the beginning. A lasting architecture has to have roots. — I. M. Pei
A modern building should derive its architectural significance solely from the vigour and consequence of its own organic proportions. It must be true to itself, logically transparent, and virginal of lies or trivialities. — Walter Gropius
A modern, harmonic and lively architecture is the visible sign of an authentic democracy. — Walter Gropius
No matter what, nobody can take away the dances you've already had.
Modern architecture is not a style, it's an attitude — Marcel Breuer
To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history, but to articulate it. — Daniel Libeskind
Modernism in architecture went hand in hand with socialist and fascist projects to rid old Europe of its hierarchical past — Roger Scruton
Great leaders are willing to follow. Leadership is a dance, not a parade.
In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending your left leg, it's modern architecture. — Nancy BanksSmith
In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending your left leg, it's modern architecture. — Nancy Banks-Smith
Modern architecture does not mean the use of immature new materials; the main thing is to refine materials in a more human direction. — Alvar Aalto
The only thing wrong with architecture is architects. — Frank Lloyd Wright
Dance Performance Quotes
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
You can fool the eyes and minds of the audience, but you cannot fool their hearts. — Howard Thurston
When you are on stage you are having an affair with three thousand people. — Gelsey Kirkland
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
My father-in-law saw me at a dance performance. The next day, I got a phone call, and the caller said, 'I'm Dhirubhai Ambani... may I talk to Nita?' I said, 'It's a wrong number' and put down the phone. Then he called again... and I said, 'If you're Dhirubhai Ambani, then I'm Elizabeth Taylor.' — Nita Ambani
If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles. — Gertrude Stein
The reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living. — Martha Graham
You remember that my great vision came to me when I was only nine years old, and you have seen that I was not much good for anything until after I had performed the horse dance near the mouth of the Tongue River during my eighteenth summer. — Black Elk
I just wanted to perform. I just wanted to perform in whatever capacity, whether it was acting, singing, dancing, comedy - whatever it was, I just loved it and felt at my absolute happiest when I was performing for people. — James Corden
The real self of an artiste lies in art, so when an artiste performs, all the pain, trauma and tension get released through art, be it dancing, painting, singing, writing or even martial arts. — Mrinalini Sarabhai
...all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill in dancing. — Moliere
Modern Poetry Quotes
You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It's one of the great things poetry does. — Robert Morgan
You know I have about the same interest in jewelry as I have in politics, horse racing, modern poetry, and women who need weird excitement – none. — Cary Grant
Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity like petrol. But to me it's the oil of life. — John Betjeman
Most poetry is very formal, but when a modern poet is formal he gets more attention for it than old poets did. — Robert Lowell
High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this. — Diane Wakoski
Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca. — W. S. Merwin
The way in which modern German poetry follows theories reminds me of pupils who, scolded by their teacher for their insubordination, justify themselves by saying that they invented new rules of propriety according to which they are quite well- behaved. — Franz Grillparzer
The reason modern poetry is difficult is so that the poet's wife cannot understand it. — Wendy Cope
I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry. — Randall Jarrell
I had art as a major, along with English, French and History. I had dance, modern dance. In English I was allowed to write my own poetry, which I eventually got published. — Sally Kirkland
Dance Practice Quotes
He who neither drinks, nor smokes, nor dances, he who preaches & even occasionally practice piety, temperance and celibacy, is generally a saint, or a mahatma or more likely a humbug but he certainly won't make a leader or for that matter a good soldier — Sam Manekshaw
Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow. — Kurt Vonnegut
Water, the Hub of Life. Water is its mater and matrix, mother and medium. Water is the most extraordinary substance! Practically all its properties are anomolous, which enabled life to use it as building material for its machinery. Life is water dancing to the tune of solids. — Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
When I'm not at the keyboard, I'm generally reading, practicing tai chi or middle eastern dance, or cooking. — Sarah Zettel
When I design a wedding dress with a bustle, it has to be one the bride can dance in. I love the idea that something is practical and still looks great. — Vera Wang
The smartest thing I did in law school: asking my future wife to go out dancing with me. The smartest thing I did when practicing law: quitting. The smartest thing I've done in writing: following my own head and writing what I wanted to write, and nothing but. — Ben Fountain
Persons with a talent who never practice excellence are the worst enemies of themselves. — Nelly Mazloum
If you're not messing up every now and then at practice, you're not doing anything above your ability to progress. — Crazy Legs
You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice. — Martha Graham
Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired. — Martha Graham
Modern Music Quotes
Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music. — Sergei Rachmaninoff
Music expresses that which cannot be put into words. — Victor Hugo
Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics. — Pietro Mascagni
With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues. — Brian Setzer
My music is not modern, it is merely badly played — Arnold Schoenberg
Modern music and artistry would look and sound completely different if not for the groundbreaking contributions Michael Jackson gifted to the world. — L.A. Reid
I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world's music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach. — Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
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
Music is a gut thing. You're working in a medium which is more in touch with the primal than the modern. A gig is a ritual. There's a congregation. — Siobhan Fahey
How great musicians demonstrate a mutual respect and trust on the bandstand can alter your outlook on the world and enrich every aspect of your life, understanding what it means to be a global citizen in the most modern sense. — Wynton Marsalis
Art Dance Quotes
Existence is movement. Action is movement. Existence is defined by the rhythm of forces in natural balance. (...) It is our appreciation for dance that allows us to see clearly the rhythms of nature and to take natural rhythm to a plane of well-organised art and culture. — Rudolf von Laban
I don't want people who want to dance; I want people who have to dance. — George Balanchine
If words were adequate to describe fully what the dance can do, there would be no reason for all the mighty muscular effort, the discomfort, the sweat and the splendors of that art. — Jose Limon
If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it — Isadora Duncan
I saw the dance as a vision of ineffable power. A man could, with dignity and a towering majesty, dance. Not mince, cavort, do "fancy dancing" or "showoff" steps. No: Dance as Michelangelo's visions dance and as the music of Bach dances. — Jose Limon
Where there is no heart there is no art. — Anna Pavlova
The art of Mime encompasses all the feelings of the soul. The Dance, on the other hand, is essentially an expression of joy, a desire to follow the rhythms of the music. — August Bournonville
Simplify, slow down, be kind. And don't forget to have art in your life - music, paintings, theater, dance, and sunsets. — Eric Carle
I dance not to entertain but to help people better understand each other. Because through dance I have experienced the wordless joy of freedom, I seek it more fully now for my people and for all people everywhere. — Pearl Primus
The Dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing. — Doris Humphrey
Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics. — Fritjof Capra
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
There are times when the simple dignity of movementcan fulfill the function of a volume of words. — Doris Humphrey
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
I enjoy the freedom of modern dance as well as the constraints of classical dance. — Deborah Bull
Modern physics has... revealed that every sub-atomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction. — Fritjof Capra
A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet, that the two disciplines were totally separate, and if you did one, you couldn’t do the other. I’m beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things. — Twyla Tharp
I would have to challenge the term, modern dance. I don't really use that term in relation to my work. I simply think of it as dancing. I think of it as moving. — Twyla Tharp
My mother was a modern woman with a limited interest in religion. When the sun set and the fast of the Day of Atonement ended, she shot from the synagogue like a rocket to dance the Charleston. — Lionel Blue
Modern language must be older than the cave paintings and cave engravings and cave sculptures and dance steps in the soft clay in the caves in Western Europe, in the Aurignacian Period some 35,000 years ago, or earlier. I can't believe they did all those things and didn't also have a modern language. — Murray Gell-Mann
Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times. The dancers don't even look at one another. They are just a lot of isolated individuals jiggling in a kind of self-hypnosis and dancing with others only to remind themselves that we are not completely alone in this world. — Agnes De Mille
A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I'm beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things. — Twyla Tharp
I got the part [in Into the Forest], I started taking ballet again to try to regain my strength back. I actually love that it was changed to Crystal Pite's modern dance. And I wouldn't even really call it modern dance because it feels like it's in its own genre. — Evan Rachel Wood
You know I very much respect Yvonne Rainer, she is very important - in American dance, the entire development of modern dance, and creating a wonderful physical language. — Marina Abramovic
Those who manage change in modern organizations need to learn to dance, to become healers capable of releasing collective energy to heal the wounds of change. — Terrence E. Deal
DJing for people is fun until someone comes up with a phone screen that has 'PLAY SOME RIHANNA' written on it. I prefer to play older songs because they're the ones I personally enjoy dancing and singing along to and modern dance music bores my brains out. — Alexa Chung
Neo-Hoodoo is the 8 basic dances of 19th century New Orleans' Place Congo- the Calinda the Bamboula the Chacta the Babouille the Conjaille the Juba the Congo and the VooDoo- modernized into the Philly Dog, the Hully Gully, the Funky Chicken, the Popcorn, the Boogaloo and the dance of great American choreographer Buddy Bradley. — Ishmael Reed
I used to dance when I was younger - ballet and modern dance. — Nastassja Kinski
If nobody comes to your shows, then it's modern dance. If everybody comes to your shows and no one likes it, is that ballet? I don't know. — Mark Morris
Americans will be amazed to find ho many of the modern dance steps are relics of the African heritage. — Paul Robeson
The modern dance is no dance in the first place, and when you've finally learned it, it's not modern any more. — Evan Esar
Adjustment, that synonym for conformity that comes more easily to the modern tongue, is the theme of our swan song, the piper's tune to which we dance on the brink of the abyss, the siren's melody that destroys our senses and paralyzes our wills. — Robert M. Lindner
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
In The Jack Daniels Sessions, folktales and modern landscapes collide, exploding and reforming in the form of an intriguing and intelligent collection. Cotman seizes the stories of tired tradition and galvanizes them, setting them to dance for us in wonderful, new interpretations. — Cat Rambo
I attended Professional Children's School in Manhattan because my ballet and modern dance schedules were intensive and had started to interfere with regular school hours. — Essence Atkins
Kun-Yang Lin is a young Taiwanese choreographer with strong American modern dance roots. (His) New York debut at the Cunningham studio were notable for their craft and sturdy spirituality. — Jennifer Dunning
It's nice for me to have a ballet as a kind of platform for creativity, because unlike modern dance or contemporary dance or downtown dance, ballet is formalized, and there's something orthodox about it that I like. I like that there's less emphasis on subversion and innovation. I actually think that my musical vernacular or my musical voice is also less inclined toward innovation and subversion. I think I'm a traditionalist. — Sufjan Stevens
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
It's like, say you're a dancer and you've been studying modern dance your whole life so you're used to a certain aesthetic of music or motivation or influence, if I send you something that you're totally not used to or don't understand, rarely does that work. On the average, you're not gonna feel that and it won't be you. You have to be in there. — Jlin
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 was a poet too; but modern taste
Is so refined and delicate and chaste,
That verse, whatever fire the fancy warms,
Without a creamy smoothness has no charms.
Thus, all success depending on an ear,
And thinking I might purchase it too dear,
If sentiment were sacrific'd to sound,
And truth cut short to make a period round,
I judg'd a man of sense could scarce do worse
Than caper in the morris-dance of verse. — William Cowper
Becoming a walking, dancing, fire-breathing lifestyle dragon is not something you can pursue overnight! It takes years of studying, living, and understanding the modern culture! — Theophilus London
There's this certain caliber of dancing I was striving for when I was younger, and it's very hard for me to go back and just do it for fun. But I take all other kinds of classes: I take jazz classes, modern classes, and I love doing that instead of going to the gym. The gym is not very much fun. — Summer Glau
I had danced with Janet Jackson and P. Diddy so I had done a bunch of hip hop. Really and truly my roots are in modern and ballet but, professionally, that's not really out there any more, unfortunately, so these artists aren't really having a lot of ballet dancers behind them so I had to learn hip hop really quick. — Jenna Dewan
I began with dance, doing ballet at 3, then tap, jazz, modern. Then I sang in church choirs, learned how to play clarinet and drums, sang with rock bands and only then did I get into musical theatre. — Samantha Barks
John Paul was the first modern pope to grow up in a secular culture: He attended public schools, danced with girls - indeed, as a teenager he had a crush on a beautiful Jewish girl who fled his hometown just ahead of the arrival of the Germans. — Carl Bernstein
The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
In Conclusion
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