Top 802 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Dancers - Page 5

I'm still trying to change the way people see black dancers that we can become delicate dancers, that we can be a ballerina.

The right to happiness is fundamental.

To me, dance and ballet are not so accessible.

I'm proud of my Irish heritage and culture and this show will feature a lot of Irish dancing.

I'm tongue in cheek, but very much to the point.

If you really look at hip-hop dance, it's really a rites-of-passage thing. You never see the arms release down. They're always up in fighting position. It's going to war. What do we say? We say your're going to battle. You go out there and fight.

Steven Spielberg is a talented, wonderful filmmaker.

I have no problem yelling at anybody's kid - free of charge!

I was not content at home. . . I wanted to live like a colorful butterfly in the sun.

People like eccentrics. Therefore they will leave me alone, saying that I am a mad clown.

If I see somebody dancing really well, it can make me want to dance. Or it could be the music. But perhaps the thing I miss the most is that when you're dancing, everyday concerns vanish. It's a unique world.

Finding ballet was like finding this missing piece of myself.

My journey has not been a bed of roses.

With exposure also comes more judgement and opinion so I think now is the time for me to just really solidify a safe space and be around people who are encouraging, supportive, and challenging in a healthy way. With what happened during the 2016 election, now is the time that we should feel our most brave and most fearless.

I don't want to be the Hollywood girl... I'm Southern and old-fashioned.

You have touched my heart in so many ways with your gentle tenderness, I am lost forever in your love.

Everything is an illusion.

It's been part of my signature to incorporate my humor with my dance, or even just how I'm feeling. If I'm feeling humorous, which I am, most of the day, I tend to incorporate that. If I'm dancing freestyle, if I feel like I've gotten too serious, while I'm moving, I'll think, "All right, it's time to lighten up a little bit," and I do. It just feels good.

Breathing can and should bring you into a ready-to-act condition instantly.

God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it - from what I see, from what the dancers can do, from what others do.

I think models in general have a certain insecurity about themselves because they're known for being beautiful, so they have to prove to everybody they have personality and they are intelligent.

Education in the art of dance is education of the whole man ? his physical, mental and emotional natures are disciplined and nourished simultaneously in dance.

Just as the ancients danced to call upon the spirits in nature, we too can dance to find the spirits within ourselves that have been long buried and forgotten.

Ballet is like football. I don't understand a footballer's technique but I can see when he's playing brilliantly. People don't like ballet because they think they don't understand it. Actually they do. It's the most primitive form of appeal.

I think it's important for people to understand that dance, movement, choreography is about an experience and entertainment but it's also about perception and a lens. So when we're talking about a Black female's experience through a Black female's lens, that's going to be totally different from a Black female's perspective through a Black male's lens.

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.

A good hitting instructor is able to mold his teaching to the individual. If a guy stands on his head, you perfect that.

I've had an extraordinary life as a dancer. You tour the world, you see all the great capitals of the world, the beautiful old opera houses all over Europe - you go everywhere. As a teenager, I would always say, 'I can't believe this is happening to little me,' because it was always a dream to dance.

I always tell the adults at my dance school, 'Men, you are going to have to do something that you are absolutely not used to: you have got to take command and be the boss.' Because - and this is just an observation - women get their way.

I had daydreamed through many performances of Swan Lake, thinking the dancing tutus only ever conveyed one aspect of swans: their beauty gliding on water. I wondered what it would be like to use male dancers and bring out swans' aggressive, muscular side.

Keep your mind open about what you want to do and be true to yourself. So many people are governed by what's 'in' or copy something that someone else has done.

My daughter arrived when I was five months pregnant with my son. We adopted Melanie from Korea; she was 2 years old, almost 3. I always wanted to have a family. I had a good example because Melissa Hayden was a ballerina in our company, and she had two children and danced afterward, and Allegra Kent also did.

Everybody wants to be me. What can I say?

I am a woman who enjoys herself very much; sometimes I lose, sometimes I win.

Art is an investigation.

I've always kind of just had a big personality and a voice that I wanted heard.

The two most painful things in my life are arthritis and divorce.

When you do 'Strictly,' you're kind of restricted. You have to dance for 90 seconds, you have to choreograph for your partner.

Dance keeps me fit! It's been a huge benefit in my life and it will forever be a part of me.

I think it's sexy when women have shapely bodies.

It's hard to do a reality show when there's so much crying and drama.

If you're dude, and you're still living at the crib, at home, and you're not taking care of your kid, that's the worst thing ever.

You've got to break through this idea of being light as a ballerina. The heavier you'll feel, the lighter you'll look.

When I first began choreographing, I never thought of it as choreography but as expressing feelings. Though every piece is different, they are all trying to get at certain things that are difficult to put into words. In the work, everything belongs to everything else - the music, the set, the movement and whatever is said.

Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul, when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.

Dancers are made, not born.

I feel like no one really gets to see, but, people are always talking about how they think our family dynamic is pretty cool.

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.

I love to sing and play the piano. As a child, I've always loved to sing my heart out, and even my teachers encouraged me to take up singing.

As we rise higher in the understanding of ourselves, the national and racial dissonances will be forgotten in the universal rhythms of Truth and Love.

I think guys, because we share a history growing up of being stereotyped, because there are fewer of us in the dance world, that contributes early on to a bond among us. A lot of us share stories of being harassed or teased growing up - there's a certain deep camaraderie that's formed through that shared struggle.

One day, I just wandered into a dance class full of girls, and that was it. I thought, 'Hang on! I'll have a bit of this.' I went back a week later and got dragged up by the teacher. It wasn't a massive calling.

Dance was my escape from reality.

I didn't know if I could act, but I knew I could be a great ballet dancer, and Balanchine put out the carpet for me.

I love New York. I can walk half a block and I'm at the grocery store. I don't have to drive anywhere.

Remembering that man is indeed the microcosm, the universe in miniature, the Divine Dance of the future should be able to convey with its slightest gestures some significance of the universe.

A dancer should learn from all the arts. Go to museums and look at the paintings. See how they balance things. Everything you do in the arts enriches you.

You know, I do have a little Pollyanna in me.

Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.

People get excited about things like 'Swan Lake' because they generate a personal involvement. If you set up the story properly, audiences respond to the ambiguity. People ask, 'What exactly is happening in Act Four?' and I never say. I can't put it into words, but they've got a feeling about it, and that's good enough.