Dance Quotes

Inspiration for dancers everywhere

"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

"When you perform, you are out of yourself - larger, 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

"It is an art that imprints 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 dancers' terms."
Shirley MacLaine

"Remember why it is you started doing this dance in the first place.  It has never been nor will it ever be about hitting a break, doing that certain step everyone else is doing, syncopating, or spinning faster and harder than anyone else.  The reason we all got into this crazy 'Matrix' called the 'Swing Circuit' was to have fun, meet new friends and have a wonderful tactile 'conversation' on the dance floor.  A good conversation occurs when BOTH get a chance to speak and neither person yells.  Have a good time out there.  Don't take it so seriously."
Mario Robau, Jr.

"Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art.  Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike."
Margot Fonteyn, 1919-1992

"Great dancers are not great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion." 
Martha Graham, 1893-1992

"I do not try to dance better than anyone else.  I only try to dance better than myself."
Mikhail Baryshnikov

"I don't want people who WANT to dance, I want people who HAVE to dance."
George Balanchine, 1904-1993

"The real reason I dance is because I want to explode."
Bill Evans