Top 563 Dancers Quotes & Sayings - Page 9

Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn, and lost. Life would split asunder without them. 'Come to tea, come to dinner, what's the truth of the story? have you heard the news? life in the capital is wonderful; the Russian dancers....' These are our stays and props. These lace our days together and make of life a perfect globe.

Yes, I love going to fittings and talking about the history of a costume. For 'Versailles,' a play set in 1919, the costume designer told me that pocket squares had just been introduced. The tango was becoming fashionable in London, and dancers used them to mop their brows. I love to learn fascinating stuff like that.

The feel of the place was deep, the prehistoric heartbeat of the rocks complicating the music, the people bright, all different kinds of dancers, smilers, swayers, swirlers, smokers, beer-drinking boppers, tripsters, spinners. I looked back at the crowd...and saw the show for a moment as a jewel...like a gem in a bracelet: an ornament on the body of the country, glittering in the coming darkness.

Dancers work and they work and they work, and they master their skills so far that improvisation just comes flowing out of them. Their natural expression of the best they can possibly be comes out of them because there is no boundary to hold them back... That's the mentality that I'm trying to create, recreate and hold on to forever.

I had no idea what I was walking into, and the years and years of hard work it would take. I felt like an outsider and like it was never going to happen. But even if I would have known, I think I still would have done it. Dancers are perfectionists, and that's what keeps us going and growing.

The dancers finished thier set, and one immediately strolled over to our table and straddled Ranger. Want a private party?" she asked. Not tonight," Ranger said. He handed her a twenty, and she left. What about the cat-feeding theory?" I asked him. Out the window.

Dancers should realise that they are really lucky. Dancing is not a job. It's people who are chosen. And you must realise that you are chosen. Sometimes I see a performance that makes me really angry - I think, 'Those people are lucky, and they don't realise it.'

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

I look around me and I don’t see any rock’n’roll at the moment. Instead it’s all choreography and stylists and wigs and stuff. It’s like they’re afraid to let the music breathe. No one has their own identity like the Ronettes did back in the day. We had the skirts with the slits up the side, sort of tough, sort of Spanish Harlem cool, but sweet too. We didn’t have no dancers, we didn’t have no goddamn wigs.

Mr. Balanchine wanted me to be myself. He didn't want me to look like anyone else. I love teaching our company dancers the Balanchine ballets. I try to give them what was passed down to me and what I learned from him. They dance it so beautifully. It also keeps me close to Mr. Balanchine. He's with me every single day.

The most important thing to do as an artist is to get out of your comfort zone and work with different people: people who can't read a note of music, people who have incredible classical skills, blues and jazz musicians, pop artists, visual artists, dancers and actors. Learn from people who are creative in a different way to you and you'll keep evolving.

I don't think it's about playing and singing, to be honest. That seems like old news, you know? I wasn't thinking about that. I just think that's in my body now. Dancers don't think about their legs moving one way and their arms moving another. Over time, you incorporate that into your instrument.

I think as a dancer you are always wanting to look your best, like in an outfit, you want an outfit to look the best it can on you, meaning weight is a huge one for a lot of dancers... you are always wanting to look better, look thinner.

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.

Artists have been used over and over again since the early 1980s as the legitimizers of a neighborhood in New York. And entrepreneurial artists, meaning people who themselves start out as painters, musicians, dancers, and who open a café, a bar, a restaurant, or even a co-op art gallery - they unintentionally develop the kinds of attractions that bring the middle class with some kind of cultural ambition.

As a child growing up in a grey-skied Yorkshire village, I would occasionally happen upon a Bollywood movie on the television. After a few minutes watching a bunch of sari-clad dancers cavorting on a Swiss mountain to tuneless music, I would switch over to some proper drama about housing estates and single mothers.

Duffy is go hard or go home. It's just a concept that I wanted to have when we're doing different things. When me and my dancers go in, we usually go hard or we go home. We're not here to play. We go duffy.

I did do a little research. I went to a couple really fantastic strip clubs with really talented dancers, just in terms of their physical prowess. For the scene, there was a whole dance routine that I had to do, so I worked with a pole dance instructor who helped me choreograph a number for that scene. We broke down the principles of pole dancing, for three days, for an hour a day.

My investigation of movement has led me to choices which vary from traditional norms. My dancers and I see the rehearsal as a laboratory for testing scientific principles on the body. We invent action ideas which we think are archetypal, noticeable, understandable. The outcome is a mixture of slam dancing, exquisite and amazing human flight and a wild action sport which captures kids, older people and the general public’s hearts and minds and bodies.

I think reality TV for dancers has changed for the better. There are more opportunities and the platforms that we are being given are better. We have more job security and TV is allowing different levels of dance to come through to the forefront. People can now take their abilities and turn them into brands and make these top dollars.

I'm glad I was born when I was. My time was the golden age of variety. If I were starting out again now, maybe things would happen for me, but it certainly would not be on a variety show with 28 musicians, 12 dancers, two major guest stars, 50 costumes a week by Bob Mackie - the networks just wouldn't spend the money today.

...and our footsteps rang and echoed till it sounded like the room was full of dancers, the house calling up all the people who had danced here across centuries of spring evenings, gallant girls seeing gallant boys off to war, old men and women straight-backed while outside their world disintegrated and the new one battered at their doors, all of them bruised and all of them laughing, welcoming us into their long lineage.

I like Sam Smith and Taylor Swift. I love pop music, but I also like Sam Smith's slow songs. That would be more to dance to. I think dancers like different genres of music, compared to just a regular person.

Dancers have always been a kind of background image, we've always danced behind an artist or we've danced in a movie behind the actors. We've always been very secondary.

I was runner that really started focusing on swimming at a very young age, and that's kind of how I got into acting. I was at a school for gifted athletes and gifted artists, and I got injured one year and started hanging out with all the actors and dancers and all those crazy people and started getting the bug.

There's something refreshing about going to work with a different group of dancers. There are different ways of moving, different ways in which the institution functions. There's a contrast from place to place, so the variety and the experience of working in a different place feeds me.

I'm glad I was born when I was. My time was the golden age of variety. If I were starting out again now, maybe things would happen for me, but it certainly would not be on a variety show with 28 musicians, 12 dancers, two major guest stars, 50 costumes a week by Bob Mackie. The networks just wouldn't spend the money today.

Lift up your hearts, my brothers, high, higher! And don't forget about your legs either! Lift up your legs as well, you good dancers, and better yet--stand also on your heads!

There's an innate feeling when I choreograph in juxtaposition to how I feel as a dancer. When I choreograph, I never really look into the mirror. But as dancers, we always check ourselves in the mirror. I do feel that when I choreograph, I am making a dance on my own body. Much of it is my own response to the music.

When you train as a dancer, you understand you have to work exceptionally hard. I think dancers are the hardest - working people in show business. You have to push your body beyond where you thought it could go. It's athleticism. Perfection doesn't exist, but with classical ballet, there is an ideal, and I got obsessed with that ideal. In some ways, it was problematic because I don't have an ideal ballet body, but the discipline is what I carry with me to this day. That's my park, the discipline of dancing.

Ballet in September used to be dead as a dodo. Now, with City Ballet's ingenious decision to give us four weeks of repertory in the early fall, having cut down on the relentlessly long spring season when dancers, critics and audiences droop on the vine, we wake up after the dog days of August with something to look at.

The Nicholas Brothers were the best tap-dancers. I'm not talking about their flash-dancing, I'm talking about tap-dancing. They were really saying something with their feet.

I don't just work with these kids to make them good tumblers or good dancers. I'm working with them to make them good citizens - to become taxpayers, not tax-eaters. I teach them to say please and thank you. I show them how to use a knife and fork and how to fold a napkin.

We insist on permanency, on continuity, when the only continuity possible is in growth, in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass but partners in the same pattern. The only real security in a relationship lies neither in looking back in nostalgia, nor forward with dread or anticipation, but living in the present and accepting the relationship as it is now.

In order that our art may arrive at the degree of the sublime which I demand and hope for, it is imperative for dancers to divide their time and studies between the mind and the body, and that both become the object of their application; but, unfortunately, all is given to the latter and nothing to the former. The legs are rarely guided by the brain, and, since intelligence and taste do not reside in the feet, one often goes astray.

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.

There are likewise three kinds of dancers: first, those who consider dancing as a sort of gymnastic drill, made up of impersonal and graceful arabesques; second, those who, by concentrating their minds, lead the body into the rhythm of a desired emotion, expressing a remembered feeling or experience. And finally, there are those who convert the body into a luminous fluidity, surrendering it to the inspiration of the soul.

Fonteyn was our first proper British ballerina, and from the moment I started dancing, her image engulfed me. In my first year at the Royal Ballet School, Margot's statue was outside my dormitory. Like generations of budding ballet dancers before me, I used to touch her middle finger for luck.

I have known know many therapists who come out of Pacifica Graduate Institute and love being both artists and therapists at the same time, like Maureen Murdock. They are photographers and dancers and other kinds of things and therapists at the same time. I think it really makes them a much more interesting therapist because they're so engaged with the imagination and the creativity and the depths of who they are.

A dancer must have tremendous personality. A God like Christ and even a godman like Rajneesh had some personality. Combination of talent, dedication, creativity and being emotive is imperative. A coupling of these four qualities with technique is essential. Monotony is deterrent as it regards your style and I notice today, that new dancers perform in a startlingly similar fashion.

The way to heaven is too steep, too narrow for men to dance in and keep revel rout. No way is large or smooth enough for capering rousters, for jumping, skipping, dancing dames but that broad, beaten, pleasant road that leads to hell. The gate of heaven is too narrow for whole rounds, whole troops of dancers to march in together.

I've usually never felt comfortable shooting until things were kind of claustrophobic, but ballet dancers need a lot of space, so the sets that I designed had to be big. Normally, I'd design a kitchen that was half the size of a normal kitchen, just to make everything feel kind of womb-like, but the kitchen in a ballet would have to be like 100 feet wide and just as long.

With Michael Jackson, when he moved, it looked like a martial artist to me. He was quicker than other dancers, but he didn't have muscles; he was just quicker and looked more in control of gravity. He looked like a martial arts master, so I tried to steal body movement from him; that's why I imitate Michael Jackson a little bit.

I think that in some ways 'Climax' is easier to digest than my other movies because the characters are easier to identify with. You love them because they're young, they're great dancers, they're beautiful, and they are willing to construct something. They're not losers like most of the characters of my previous movies.

I think it would be fair to say that most female dancers have dealt with, whether it's an extreme, or minor complex in eating disorders. So the first thing I would say to girls who are feeling that way is you're not alone. You're far from alone. You're the majority. There's absolutely nothing wrong with what you're feeling.

Saturday mornings in spring should always start with a jolt of dance by Paul Taylor performed by Taylor 2. The touring ensemble, an adjunct of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, offered a rare New York performance... It was an impressive event, presented by a group of highly individualistic dancers.

Fifth positions, heads, musicality, energy. Not technical things so much-getting your leg higher or doing more turns but things that would set you apart from other dancers. The only way you can be different is to be yourself if you don't find your spirit and reveal it, you just look like every other dancer.

Dancers know how to move their arms and their hands. But I don't know the first thing about how to move my arms and hands gracefully.

A lot of professional dancers become professional when they turn 15 or 16 years old, when they're still children. So you've trained every single waking moment up until that point for a career that could maybe only last 10 years, maybe longer if your body holds up, if your injuries are kept at bay.

Well . . ." St. Vincent walked slowly with her to the crowd of dancers. "I'm a wicked man who can, on occasion, be just a bit nice. And I've been searching for a nice girl who can, on occasion, be just a bit wicked.

I have a picture of all of us going to a club with my friends from 'Soul Train.' All the girls just going out to a nightclub, and we're all dressed like we were dressed on 'Soul Train.' It was the most surreal experience for me because I walk into the club with them, and people started screaming. 'Oh my God! It's the 'Soul Train' dancers.'

I have a trainer, and I'm not a trainer person. I don't like the attention. I don't like the one-on-one scrutiny. But I've had to enter into a very sort of rigorous rehabilitation program to avoid surgery on my back. I've already had four surgeries on my feet and two on my knee - all from Broadway dancing injuries. On Broadway, they don't really rehab the dancers like they do in sports. It's, "The show must go on" .

I imagine a future where many of us will call ourselves dancers and collaborate to make an art which concerns itself with primary areas of life... for me, peace is a communal work process, a collective vision. The dance itself tries to exemplify a few of these methods in a truly grounded and practical way so that the people can say: yes, there are prospects of survival.

The Framers of the First Amendment were not concerned with preventing government from abridging their freedom to speak about crops and cockfighting, or with protecting the expressive activity of topless dancers, which of late has found some shelter under the First Amendment. Rather, the Framers cherished unabridged freedom of political communication.

Turn around, and the people you thought you knew might change. Your little boy might now live half a world away. Your beautiful daughter might be sneaking out at night. Your ex-husband might by dying by degrees. This is the reason that dancers learn, early on, how to spot while doing pirouettes: we all want to be able to find the place where we started.

I walk into a large white room. It's a dance studio in midtown Manhattan. The room is clean, virtually spotless if you don’t count the thousands of skid marks and footprints left there by dancers rehearsing. Other than the mirrors, the boom box, the skid marks, and me, the room is empty.

I'm on Tinder. I work mostly in gay clubs and I would have really bad relationships because I would meet aspiring models or bartenders or go-go dancers... not always the best choices! So I got on Tinder because one of my friends was on it. It's amazing. I can get more of what I like. I love it.

Lemurs are extraordinarily leapers. I mean they are just really going from tree to tree and then if there is not a tree, they just come down to the ground very gracefully. But it is the music that makes them seem to be dancing. They are basically getting from one place to another and that's just natural for them. They are just natural acrobatic dancers, just the way they move. It's beautiful!

I would do musicals in high school where there was dancing, and I would sing my verse, and then they would choreograph it so when I would take an eight-count to back up to the back of the stage while the other dancers covered me up because my body was totally... I was always in newborn-deer mode.

I would definitely want kids. Would they be dancers? I dunno. That's up to them. If they show interest, I will push them do the best. I was not brought up in a dancer's family. I was brought up in a family where the mentality was whatever you do, you gotta try to be the best at it.