Dance Forms Quotes & Sayings

Dance is one of the most powerful forms of magical ritual ... It is an outer expression of the inner spirit. — Ted Andrews

Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. When that has educated the frame to self-possession, to nimbleness,to grace, the steps of the dancing-master are better forgotten; so painting teaches me the splendor of color and the expression of form, and as I see many pictures and higher genius in the art, I see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the indifferency in which the artist stands free to choose out of the possible forms. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Worship is much more than just singing songs. In fact, true worship is first and foremost a condition of heart and a state of mind. We can be worshipping passionately without singing a single note. Worship is born in our hearts; it fills our thoughts and then it is expressed through our mouths and through our bodies. If our hearts are filled with awe for God, we may want to sing, dance, clap, or lift up our hands in worship. We may also be reverently silent and still before God. We may desire to give offerings or offer other forms of outward expression of love for God. But any of these actions done without a right heart are simply formalism and meaningless to God. — Joyce Meyer

I began to see cinema as the perfect combination of so many wonderful art forms - painting, photography, music, dance, theater. — James Gray

Dancing is surely the most basic and relevant of all forms of expression. Nothing else can so effectively give outward form to an inner experience. Poetry and music exist in time. Painting and architecture are a part of space. But only the dance lives at once in both space and time. In it the creator and the thing created, the artist and the expression, are one. Each participates completely in the other. There could be no better metaphor for an understanding of the mechanics of the cosmos. — Lyall Watson

To gaze at flowers is to plunge into the center of the world, and through the proliferation of forms that overwhelm us there, to discover how much we belong to the world. If our eyes light up at the sight of shells, blades of grass, or clouds, it is because the eye is made of the same fabric as they are, constructed out of the same constellations of atoms; the eye is part and parcel of the same elaborate dance of forms, and driven by the same forces of the universe. — Claude Nuridsany

Death continues to stalk the streets, stealing the souls of our children as they sleep. We're running out of fingers to close their eyes, voices to bless their souls, hands to dig their graves. Poisonous fumes from their unburied bodies contaminate the alleys, and the ghosts of those who have been buried rise nightly. Their tiny forms dance above their tombstones, an agonising reminder that we've failed them. — Joanne Owen

It was then that my religious consciousness emerged to flower years afterward into definite forms of religious dancing in which there is no sense of division between spirit and flesh, religion and art. — Ruth St. Denis

I believe in the city as a natural human environment, but we must humanize it. It's art that will re-define public space in the 21st Century. We can make our cities diverse, inspirational places by putting art, dance and performance in all its forms into the matrix of street life. — Antony Gormley

In India, I was living in a little hut, about six feet by seven feet. It had a canvas flap instead of a door. I was sitting on my bed meditating, and a cat wandered in and plopped down on my lap. I took the cat and tossed it out the door. Ten seconds later it was back on my lap. We got into a sort of dance, this cat and I ... I tossed it out because I was trying to meditate, to get enlightened. But the cat kept returning. I was getting more and more irritated, more and more annoyed with the persistence of the cat. Finally, after about a half-hour of this coming in and tossing out, I had to surrender. There was nothing else to do. There was no way to block off the door. I sat there, the cat came back in, and it got on my lap. But I did not do anything. I just let go. Thirty seconds later the cat got up and walked out. So, you see, our teachers come in many forms. — Joseph Goldstein

The fact of the matter is that all apparent forms of matter and body are momentary clusters of energy. We are
little more than flickers on a multidimensional television screen. This realization directly experienced can be
delightful. You suddenly wake up from the delusion of separate form and hook up to the cosmic dance.
Consciousness slides along the wave matrices, silently at the speed of light — Timothy Leary

Every child has a right to know how to achieve control of his body in order that he may use it to the limit of his ability for the expression of his own reactions to life. Even if he can never carry his efforts far enough to realize dance in its highest forms, he may experience the sheer joy of the rhythmic sense of free, controlled, and expressive movement, and through this know an addition to life to which every human being is entitled. — Margaret H'Doubler

Dancing of late years has been degraded to the narrow limits and low professionalism of mere mechanical proficiency, associated with the most frivolous ... phases of the stage. But this day is fading ... We are turning our gaze inward, learning to seek there the divine sources of the dance, to the end that it may flower into new and more glorious forms of beauty and wealth — Ruth St. Denis

Heaven opened then, indeed. The flash was almost too novel for its inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and they could only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty. It sprang from east, west, north, south, and was a perfect dance of death. The forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for bones - dancing, leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling altogether in unparalleled confusion. With these were intertwined undulating snakes of green, and behind these was a broad mass of lesser light. Simultaneously came from every part of the tumbling sky what may be called a shout; since, though no shout ever came near it, it was more of the nature of a shout than of anything else earthly. — Thomas Hardy

There is an energy within ... pure strength ... the energy of the person which is put in different forms, in different shapes ... once we discover that energy I think that such a thing as dance becomes such a delight because you're moving on a stream that is you but it is even over and beyond you ... — Katherine Dunham

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

I played a lot of Bach's partitas and sonatas; I like the way that Bach was abstracting already from these dance forms. — Caroline Shaw

The sensation of seeing extremely fine women, with superb forms, perfectly unconscious of undress, and yet evidently aware of their beauty and dignity, is worth a week's seasickness to experience ... To me the effect [of a Siva dance] was that of a dozen Rembrandts intensified into the most glowing beauty of life and motion. — Henry Adams

Smoke fills the room, gray and sylphlike, lovely in its deadly grace. It trails into the fire and forms what appear to be wings - black and magnificent. A man's silhouette fills out the image, two arms reaching for me.
Morpheus, or a mirage?
My mind trips back to our dance across the starlit sky in Wonderland, how amazing it felt to be so free. What would it feel like to dance with him in the middle of a blazing inferno, surrounded by an endless power that breathes and grows at our will? — A.G. Howard

Dance, one of the oldest forms of artistic expression, requires only the human body for its realization. — Igor Youskevitch

I once knew of a girl whose story forms the substance of the diary. Whether he has seduced others I do not know ... we learn of his desire for something altogether arbitrary. With the help of his mental gifts he knew how to tempt a girl to draw her to him without caring to possess her in any stricter sense.
I can imagine him able to bring a girl to the point where he was sure she would sacrifice all then he would leave without a word let a lone a declaration a promise.
The unhappy girl would retain the consciousness of it with double bitterness because there was not the slightest thing she could appeal to. She could only be constantly tossed about in a terrible witches' dance at one moment reproaching herself forgiving him at another reproaching him and then since the relationship would only have been actual in a figurative sense she would constantly have to contend with the doubt that the whole thing might only have been an imagination. — Soren Kierkegaard

Engaged in a fiery dance, their bodies were linked and seperated by the flashing blades. At times they nearly touched, taut skin only a hair's breadth away, but then momentum would whirl them apart, and they would withdraw for a second, only to join again. Their sinuous forms wove together like twisting ropes of windblown smoke. — Christopher Paolini

To understand what I am saying, you have to believe that dance is something other than technique. We forget where the movements come from. They are born from life. When you create a new work, the point of departure must be contemporary life
not existing forms of dance. — Pina Bausch

Every subatomic interaction consists of the annihilation of the original particles and the creation of new subatomic particles. The subatomic world is a continual dance of creation and annihilation, of mass changing into energy and energy changing into mass. Transient forms sparkle in and out of existence, creating a never-ending, forever newly created reality. — Gary Zukav

Corn Dance remains strongest among the Muskogee people. The elements of the ritual dance are similar to those of the Valley of Mexico. Although the dance takes various forms among different communities, the core of it is the same, a commemoration of the gift of corn by an ancestral corn woman. The peoples of the corn retain great affinities under the crust of colonialism. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard. — Warren Bennis

Indian actors, because of the format of our stories, need to be good actors, and be able to perform emotional sequences, do a bit of comedy, dance and singing, action, because all of this forms just one film. In many ways I'd say there are greater demands on Indian actors than there are on Hollywood. — Amitabh Bachchan

It's great that ballroom dancing is being recognised. For many years ballroom dancers were misunderstood and other dance forms didn't want anything to do with us. — Anton Du Beke

Dance is one of the most revealing art forms. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

Dance is the most fundamental of all art forms. — Twyla Tharp

Nothing so clearly and inevitably reveals the inner man than movement and gesture. It is quite possible, if one chooses, to conceal and dissimulate behind words or paintings or statues or other forms of human expression, but the moment you move you stand revealed, for good or ill, for what you are. — Doris Humphrey

For truth to tell, dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with pen- that one must learn how to write — Friedrich Nietzsche

All things are aggregations of atoms that dance & by their movement produce sound. When the rhythm of the dance changes, the sound it produces also changes ... Each atom perpetually sings its song, and the sound at every moment creates dense subtle forms. — Alexandra David-Neel

Rock has to absorb other rhythmic forms, because the underlying rhythm of music changes with fashion, and people like to move differently, and the underlying rhythms have to be the ones that people want to dance to. — Mick Jagger

shot in the eye
shot in the brain
shot in the ass
shot like a flower in the dance

amazing how death wins hands down
amazing how much credence is given to idiot forms of
life

amazing how laughter has been drowned out
amazing how viciousness is such a constant

I must soon declare my own war on their war
I must hold to my last piece of ground
I must protect the small space I have made that has
allowed me life

my life not their death
my death not their death

this place, this time, now
I vow to the sun
that I will laugh the good laugh once again
in the perfect place of me
forever.

their death not my life. — Charles Bukowski

There are different forms of seduction, and the kind I have witnessed in Persian dancers is so unique, such a mixture of subtlety and brazenness, I cannot find a Western equivalent to compare it to. I have seen women of vastly different backgrounds take on that same expression: a hazy, lazy, flirtatious look in their eyes ... This sort of seduction is elusive; it is sinewy and tactile. It twists, twirls, winds and unwinds. Hands curl and uncurl while the waist seems to coil and recoil ... It is openly seductive but not surrendering. — Azar Nafisi

Obviously, there's the seedy side of the strip club world and pole dancing. But, pole dancing, as an art form, is really beautiful. It's been hyper-sexualized because it's associated with strippers, but if you think about it, just in terms of other kinds of dancing, they're using an instrument to create these amazing dance forms. — Megalyn Echikunwoke

My focus is anything that allows me to express myself. Rap, dance, photography. Those are my forms of expression. — Keith Stanfield

Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen? — Friedrich Nietzsche

We must recognize that our frustrations are largely due to the fact that we have not learned how to "dance" to a large part of the emotional spectrum. Being emotionally versatile is like being a good dancer. Just as dancers must challenge themselves to master new moves with their bodies, we must challenge ourselves to learn new forms of psychological choreography. — T.K. Coleman

The two go hand in hand like a dance: chance flirts with necessity, randomness with determinism. To be sure, it is from this interchange that novelty and creativity arise in Nature, thereby yielding unique forms and novel structures. — Eric Chaisson

At every moment of life the civilised man is hedged about by restrictions of impulse: if he happens to feel cheerful he must not sing or dance in the street, while if he happens to feel sad he must not sit on the pavement and weep, for fear of obstructing pedestrian traffic. In youth his liberty is restricted at school, in adult life it is restricted throughout his working hours. All this makes zest more difficult to retain, for the co ntinual restraint tends to produce wearin ess and boredom. Nevertheless, a civilised society is impossible without a very considerable degree of restraint upon spontaneous
impulse, since spontaneous impulse will only produce the simplest forms of social c ooperation, not those highly complex forms which modern economic organisation demands — Bertrand Russell

Dance today is clearly in an unsettled state. Old forms and traditions are being given up. New ones are arising to take their place. A time of change presents a confused picture. That there is change is proof that dance is organically vital
and much more so than it has ever before been in this country. — Margaret H'Doubler