Quotes & Sayings About Dance Isadora Duncan

The noblest art is the nude. This truth is recognized by all, and followed by painters, sculptors and poets. Only the dancer has forgotten it, who should remember it, as the instrument of [the dance] art is the human body itself. — Isadora Duncan

The wind? I am the wind. The sea and the moon? I am the sea and the moon. Tears, pain, love, bird-flights? I am all of them. I dance what I am. Sin, prayer, flight, the light that never was on land or sea? I dance what I am. — Isadora Duncan

The early giants of modern dance - Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis - barely left traces of their art. — Robert Gottlieb

My art is just an effort to express the truth of my being in gesture and movement. It has taken me long years to find even one absolutely true movement. — Isadora Duncan

My first idea of movement, of the dance, certainly came from the rhythm of the wave. — Isadora Duncan

A dancer, if she is great, can give to the people something that they can carry with them forever. They can never forget it, and it has changed them, though they may never know it. — Isadora Duncan

The Dance - it is the rhythm of all that dies in order to live again; it is the eternal rising of the sun. — Isadora Duncan

The Dance of the Future will have to become again a high religious art as it was with the Greeks. For art which is not religious is not art, it is mere merchandise — Isadora Duncan

I have discovered the dance. I have discovered the art which has been lost for two thousand years — Isadora Duncan

If I could say it, I would not have to dance it. — Isadora Duncan

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. — Isadora Duncan

It is the mission of all art to express the highest and most beautiful ideals of man. — Isadora Duncan

Man must speak, then sing, then dance. The speaking is the brain, the thinking man. The singing is the emotion. The dancing is the Dionysian ecstasy which carries away all. — Isadora Duncan

If we seek the real source of the dance, if we go to nature, we find that the dance of the future is the dance of the past, the dance of eternity, and has been and always will be the same ... The movement of waves, of winds, of the earth is ever the same lasting harmony. — Isadora Duncan

Dance is the movement of the universe concentrated in an individual. — Isadora Duncan

I was born by the sea, and I have noticed that all the great events of my life have taken place by the sea. My first idea of movement, of the dance, certainly came from the rhythm of the waves. — Isadora Duncan

If I could explain, I wouldn't need to dance! — Isadora Duncan

You don't have to be Isadora Duncan to love dancing. — Marty Rubin

It has taken me years of struggle, hard work, and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence. — Isadora Duncan

Let us first teach little children to breathe, to vibrate, to feel, and to become one with the general harmony and movement of nature. Let us first produce a beautiful human being, a dancing child. — Isadora Duncan

To dance is to live. What I want is a school of life. — Isadora Duncan

The only dance masters I could have were Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Walt Whitman and Nietzsche. — Isadora Duncan

Oh Woman, come before us, before our eyes longing for beauty, and tired of the ugliness of civilization, come in simple tunics, letting us see the line and harmony of the body beneath, and dance for us. Dance us the sweetness of life. Give us again the sweetness and the beauty of the true dance, give us again the joy of seeing the simple unconscious pure body of a woman. Like a great call it has come, and women must hear it and answer it. — Isadora Duncan

Anybody can and should dance ... It's good for the body and the spirit. — Isadora Duncan

I am seeking that dance which might be the divine expression of the human spirit through the medium of the body's movement. — Isadora Duncan

When I was sixteen, I danced before an audience without music. At the end someone suddenly cried 'its Death and the Maiden'. But that was not my intention; I was only endeavoring to express my first knowledge of the underlying tragedy in all seemingly joyous manifestation. The dance according with my comprehension, should have been called 'Life and the Maiden'. — Isadora Duncan

I intend to work for this dance of the future. I do not know whether I have the necessary qualities; I may have neither genius nor talent nor temperament. But I know that I have a Will; and will and energy sometimes prove greater than either genius or talent or temperament. — Isadora Duncan

Dancing: The Highest Intelligence in the Freest Body. — Isadora Duncan

Before I was born my mother was in great agony of spirit and in a tragic situation. She could take no food except iced oysters and champagne. If people ask me when I began to dance, I reply 'In my mother's womb, probably as a result of the oysters and Champagne.' — Isadora Duncan

Now I am going to reveal to you something which is very pure, a totally white thought. It is always in my heart; it blooms at each of my steps ... The Dance is love, it is only love, it alone, and that is enough ... I, then, it is amorously that I dance: to poems, to music but now I would like to no longer dance to anything but the rhythm of my soul. — Isadora Duncan

To express what is the most moral, healthful and beautiful in art this is the mission of the dancer, and to this I dedicate my life. — Isadora Duncan