Dance Movement Quotes & Sayings

Movement is my medicine, my meditation, my metaphor and my method, a living language we can rely upon to tell us the truth about who we are, who we are with, and where we are going. There is no dogma in the dance. — Gabrielle Roth

I wasn't so stupid that I didn't realize the implications of what they were saying. In my live work I was going for the quick thrill, rather than spending time concentrating on my voice. I figured I'd get on, make as many quick movement as possible, dance my ass off for five minutes, move into the insult portion of the evening, and then, at the end, create some kind of chaos until the 55 minutes were up. — Iggy Pop

Every dance you make belongs to you. It is part of your collection. When you think of it like that, you'll want to make your next routine the best you've ever made! — Torron-Lee Dewar

We have come to consider the word technique applicable only to movements that are so showy as to approach acrobatics ... — La Meri

Sergio Trujillos choreography adds coals to the inferno, with movement that plain just doesnt stop. We know from Jersey Boys that he can capture this style, but in Memphis, he kicks it up towards art, playing with the authentic touches to add some hits of Fosse, or riffs from modern dance that take us just that extra step we need. — Richard Ouzounian

Movement is my medium and my metaphor. I know that if a wave of energy is allowed to complete itself, it yields a whole new wave, and in fact that is all I really know. Riding these waves means joining the cosmic dance that, as Dante says, 'moves the sun and the other stars.' — Gabrielle Roth

Movement is the freedom of the body; stillness, of the mind. — Marty Rubin

Ballet is merely a new rationalization of society's instinctive movement towards self-destruction. A dance of death for the Gadarene swine. — Eric Ambler

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

Reincarnation is a dance. It is a movement of life to the rhythm of the universe. Spirit and matter join together as one dancing partner. They dance and it goes on forever. — Frederick Lenz

I ought not to have stirred, I was swept into the dance, caught up in the whirling movement of things. Being in Time means running after the present. You run after things, you run with things, you flow away. — Eugene Ionesco

He gave us music that reached into the ear like a lover's tongue and changed the color of our feelings. He presented movement so exquisite and fluid it coaxed our souls out of our bodies to dance with him, weightless in the perfume of divinity. — Katie Waitman

The rhythm of movement is the dance of music. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The important thing is to know why we want to dance. We dance a solitude that we have inside us and cannot occupy with anything. This gap, that emptiness to which we put movement is the TANGO. — Carlos Gavito

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

The medieval doctors of divinity who did not pretend to settle how many angels could dance on the point of a needle cut a very poor figure as far as romantic credulity is concerned beside the modern physicists who have settled to the billionth of a millimetre every movement and position in the dance of the electrons. Not for worlds would I question the precise accuracy of these calculations or the existence of electrons (whatever they may be). The fate of Joan is a warning to me against such heresy. — George Bernard Shaw

When movement becomes ecstatic, then this is dance. When the movement is so total there is no ego, then it is dance. — Rajneesh

I was told that I was good in my dance movement classes and that I should concentrate on dance because it would enhance my ability to get acting work. — Morgan Freeman

It's all about the sensuality of movement, every movement you make. That's why I love doing action movies. It's all about movement, dance - even if you're hitting someone in the face. You've got to sell it all with great passion. There's a narrative to the body. It's exactly the same as dance. — DeObia Oparei

To dance, above all, is to enter into the motions of life. It is an action, a movement, a process. The dance of life is not so much a metaphor as a fact; to dance is to know oneself alone and to celebrate it. — Sherman Paul

If we are to be honest with ourselves, we must admit that the "Negro" has been inviting whites, as well as civil society's junior partners, to the dance of social death for hundreds of years, but few have wanted to learn the steps. They have been, and remain today - even in the most anti-racist movements, like the prison abolition movement - invested elsewhere. This is not to say that all oppositional political desire today is pro-white, but it is usually anti-Black, meaning it will not dance with death. — Frank B. Wilderson III

Still in the black hemisphere the stars blazed and slowly wheeled; beneath them, Will felt so infinitesimally small that it seemed impossible he should even exist. Immensity pressed in on him, terrifying, threatening
and then, in a swift flash of movement like a dance, like the glint of a leaping fish, came a flick of brightness in the sky from a shooting star ... He heard Bran give a small chirrup of delight, a spark struck from the same bright sudden joy that filled his own being. — Susan Cooper

It's something that I learned even before I started acting: the movement, the dance of the body, is very important, and it comes before words. — Denis Lavant

A body in movement is its philosophy. — Nelly Mazloum

Talent will only take you so far, and it is your ability to feel the music and explore a movement that will bring you the greatest pleasure in dance. — Karen Kain

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

Dance ... is life, or becomes it, in a way that other arts cannot attain. It is not in stone, or words or tones, but in our muscles. It is a formulation of their movements. — Baker Brownell

Dance is just like film in that it allows for thoughts in movement. — Twyla Tharp

I'm glad I went through the training because I've met such great mentors and lifelong friends/collaborators along the way. Also, any training (acting, movement, dance, piano, singing, etc) allowed me to hone my skills and find an inner space of self-generating creativity. — Jade Hassoune

Conversations are like dances. Two people effortlessly move in step with one another, usually anticipating the other person's next move. If one of the dancers moves in an unexpected direction, the other typically adapts and builds on the new approach. As with dancing, it is often difficult to tell who is leading and who is following in that the two people are constantly affecting each other. And once the dance begins, it is almost impossible for one person to singly dictate the couple's movement. — James W. Pennebaker

I am certain that movement never lies. There is only one law of posture I have been able to discover - the perpendicular line connecting heaven and earth. — Martha Graham

My dance is a sacred poem in which each movement is a word and whose every word is underlined by music. The temple in which I dance can be vague or faithfully reproduced, for I am the temple. — Mata Hari

This is who she is. She is this movement here, these steps, this turn, this raising of this arm. It's a waste of time to think of oneself in any other terms. For what of us, what of reality, cannot implode, evaporate, contort, evade, disappear? But the body doesn't lie. At a certain point it's impossible to dance loneliness without feeling genuinely lonely. — Meg Howrey

Of course, Ginger was able to accomplish sex through dance. We told more through our movements instead of the big clinch. We did it all in the dance. — Fred Astaire

When our thoughts revolve we are so often deceived into supposing that their violent movement is an indication of their vigorous originality, the upheaval of prejudice and fixed ideas, when all the time it is more likely that the machine which contains them is only an elaborate cement-mixer, and when the thinking is finished, those whirling thoughts are smoothed into the unchanged conventional mould and seeing them set solid enough to dance, to build, to travel upon, we would never dream of their first deceit, of the hope once roused by their apparently violent reorganisation ... — Janet Frame

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

Dancing is creating a sculpture that is visible only for a moment. — Erol Ozan

He threw one long, leather-clad leg over the couch arm and slithered over it to his feet. It was like watching a lap dance without a lap. To my knowledge, Jean-Claude had never stripped at Guilty Pleasures, the vampire strip club he owned, but he could have. He had a way of making even the smallest movement sexual and vaguely obscene. You always felt like he was thinking wicked thoughts, things you couldn't say in mixed company. — Laurell K. Hamilton

I describe things in terms of body movements. I dance a bit to describe what sort of movement it ought to make, and that's a good way of talking to musicians. Particularly bass players. — Brian Eno

My impression is that a sense of rhythm, which has no analog in language, is unique and that its correlation with movement is unique to human beings. Why else would children start to dance when they're two or three? Chimpanzees don't dance. — Oliver Sacks

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

I really think music and movement - dance, you know - and literature inform my visuals. I think film is also based in dance. The relationship between me, the camera and the actor is always a dance. — Christopher Doyle

Dance is about movement and can be an art, but it's also about communication - with yourself, as much as with other people. — Jan Murray

Dance is movement, and movement is life. — Ludmilla Chiriaeff

I love physical movement. Dance was my favorite thing, and I was a gymnast. I find that expression through movement is easier, in some ways, than expression through words. — Kristin Kreuk

To be sure, just because the darkness and the light are equally sacred does not mean we benefit by becoming complacent about the darkness we may meet in ourselves. Ultimately, if we are to cleanse the mirror of perception and purify ourselves, then we must bring light into the darkness. That's always been the path of consciousness and the movement of illumination. This coexistence of darkness and light indeed creates a dance in which the clarity of light is invited to lead, but it does not create a hierarchy. — Tehya Sky

Man has used human rhythmic movement as raw material out of which to create works of art, as the composer of music uses sound, the sculptor uses stone and wood, the painter his pigments, and the writer - words. — Ted Shawn

'Entity' is not about science. The process behind it may dictate the nature of the piece, but it's not like a dance about Einstein where I'm trying to convert his ideas into movement and communicate that to an audience. — Wayne McGregor

I wish I could play music. I think I get as closeas possible with the editing of the films. Over the years musichas been an even more important influence than-or as important as-film.There's no doubt about it. Painting, movement, dance, sculpture-it'sall in cinema. — Martin Scorsese

I love the whole world of dance, because dancing is really the emotions through bodily movement. And however you feel, you just bring out the inner feeling through your mood ... people don't think about the importance of it. — Michael Jackson

Movement has the capacity to take us to the home
of the soul, the world within for which we have
no name. Movement reaches our deepest nature,
and dance creatively expresses it. Through dance,
we gain new insights into the mystery of our lives.
When brought forth from the inside and forged by
the desire to create personal change, dance has the
profound power to heal the body, psyche and soul. — Anna Halprin

I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. — Emma Goldman

Human beings are born with the instinct to express themselves through movement. Even before he could communicate with words, primitive man was dancing to the beat of his own heart. — Bob Fosse

Silence is the neutral Center in which movements take a breath of repose. — Nelly Mazloum

You're not allowed to have legs and not use them.
Dance. — Dianna Hardy

Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. It's the rhythm of your life. It's the expression in time and movement,in happiness, joy, sadness and envy. — Jacques D'Amboise

The English dance unites the guests of an evening by the spell of rhythmical movement into a chance casual community. — Curt Sachs

At the root of all the various manifestations of dancing lies the common impulse to resort to movement to externalize emotional states which we cannot externalize by rational means. — Jamake Highwater

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

It is the best of all games for me. It frequently escapes from the pattern of sport and assumes the form of a virile ballet. It is purer than any dance because the actions of the players are not governed by music or crowded into a formula by a director. The movement is natural and unrehearsed and controlled only by the unexpected flight of the ball. — Jimmy Cannon

Stop thinking about the steps. There are no moves in blues, only movement. Just listen to the music," Matt whispered into my ear.
I let go, softening into his arms. The sways became steps, and without even realising, I was dancing. — Renee Conoulty

Spiritualizing sex is actually a movement of energy - feeling and emotion - that rises within you and moves into your sexual physicality as an alive, tender, erotic, or passionate expression. Your bodies move without inhibition so all the energy can flow out of you and between the two of you. You allow spiritual energy to express its dance through you. Sexuality can be a profound demonstration of your love, and especially your freedom, to express and bond. Spiritual sex, then, combines how you express your love with the intentions or blessings you bring to your partnership. — Alexandra Katehakis

My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement. — Martha Graham

A dancer must listen to his body and pay homage to it. Behind the movement lies this terrible, driving passion, this necessity. I won't settle for anything less. — Martha Graham

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

Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it. — Martha Graham

Choreography is amazing. I'm still a dancer, yet I transitioned into choreography then as a Creative Director. All of these creative elements are brought out of being a dancer. Directing is something that comes out of understanding movement and choreography. Directing movement is directing a dance piece. — Laurieann Gibson

Dance is an ephemeral, a fleeting art. To describe this momentum, every movement on stage, in words is virtually impossible. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

WHILE MUSIC alone can unlock people with parkinsonism, and movement or exercise of any kind is also beneficial, an ideal combination of music and movement is provided by dance (and dancing with a partner, or in a social setting, brings to bear other therapeutic dimensions). — Oliver Sacks

I've sought out several dance teachers-shaman-like women dance teachers-to get in touch with the mystical through movement. — Marisa Tomei

Dance, theatre, etc. as art, will disappear along with the dominating 'expression' of tragedy and harmony: the movement of life itself will become harmonious. — Piet Mondrian

Dance is movement, is action, and like all action, it reveals us to ourselves in the doing. — Gabrielle Roth

The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word. — Mata Hari

I wasn't a ballet baby. My first dance class was in an outdoor pavilion when I was three. It was called 'creative movement.' The teacher gave us chiffon scarves in beautiful colors. She turned on some music and said, 'Now go dance.' So for me, dance has always been about self-expression. — Carrie Ann Inaba

When dancing is right, the movement possesss a logic common to us all, an inevitability that takes it beyond the personal and egocentric and makes of it classical art. — Twyla Tharp

Among its many uses, dance/movement therapy aims to help people overcome trauma, often by nonverbally bringing the elements of the experience to the fore. — Judith Lynne Hanna

When you step back and watch people, you realize that we use every single body part. Movement, dance - I find it genius because it's ultimate expression, really. — Jude Law

I can't really hear the audience applause when I'm on stage. I'm totally immersed in the piece. But sometimes I get a lot of it and wonder, "Now, why did they applaud here?" If it's a white crowd, they usually applaud because they think it's a pretty movement. If it's a black crowd, it's usually because they identify with the message. — Judith Jamison

It wasn't a dance, but the complete absence of noise and movement, the silence, that brought me in contact with myself. — Paulo Coelho

Existence is movement. Action is movement. Existence is defined by the rhythm of forces in natural balance. ( ... ) It is our appreciation for dance that allows us to see clearly the rhythms of nature and to take natural rhythm to a plane of well-organised art and culture. — Rudolf Von Laban

People can stand around and share movement with each other, whether it's professional or not. That's how it grows. That's what dance does. It's its own language. — Stephen Boss

All women are born dancers in the sense that natural movement becomes their body and grows out of their instinctive feeling for womanhood, motherhood and tenderness. — Nelly Mazloum

From the very beginning, I studied acting, directing, lighting, dance and movement. I didn't rely on just the magic to take place. It's a shame that a lot of magicians just rely on the trick itself and they have no other abilities. They get away with the wonder factor, and I don't think that's enough. It's great, but it's not enough. — David Copperfield

Sometimes it's only in the ecstasy of unrepressed movement that we may enter the stillness of our authentic selves. In such sacred moments, the world seems to be in step. This is why the idea of finding love across the dance floor endure - symbolizing that, when we know the true rhythm of our heart, we know the other. — Alexandra Katehakis

What if you were a teacher but had no voice to speak your knowledge? What if you had no language at all and yet there was something you needed to say? Wouldn't you dance it? Wouldn't you act it out? Wouldn't your every movement tell the story? In time you would be so eloquent that just to gaze upon you would reveal it all. And so it is with these silent green lives. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

Most of the teaching I do is not verbal. It's in every movement of my body. It's in my dance. It's in the way I lift a glass of water. It's in my voice tone. It's in every aspect of my life - because it isn't my life anymore. — Frederick Lenz

I never knew I wanted to become a ballerina. I was discovered at the age of 13. I had a love for movement even though I had no exposure to dance other than what I saw in music videos, like hip-hop music videos. But I knew that I loved moving. — Misty Copeland

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. — T. S. Eliot

What really interests me about capturing and suspending movement is that I get to experience something invisible and inaudible, as elusive and fleeting as thought itself, and give it form ... Maybe my paintings are all just little fragments of the Cosmic Dance suspended in time. — James Nares

There is a juiciness to creativity, a succulence that comes up from within, a sensuality which both produces and is soothed by the act and product of creativity. Creativity is pleasing to us on a deep level. Be it the feel of clay in our hands, the colors that make us feel alive as we knit or sew, the meaning that we find in the words that we write, the energizing feel of movement as we dance and the music moves through our bodies. Taking part in creativity helps us to be more fully alive on every level, it asks that we engage with life in a visceral, and interactive way. — Lucy H. Pearce

To express dynamic motion through a static moment became for me limited and unsatisfactory. The basic idea was to liberate myself from this old concept and arrive at an image in which the spectator could feel the beauty of a fourth dimension, which lies much more between moments than within a moment. In music one remembers never one tone, but a melody, a theme, a movement. In dance, never a moment, but again the beauty of a movement in time and space. — Ernst Haas

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

It was a kind of fire dance in which the stick was thrown and caught, and the flame, tossed and twirled, created sinuous shapes, circles and ever-moving patterns. Ancel's red hair created a pleasing aesthetic alongside the red and orange fire. And even without the hypnotic movement of the flame, the dance was beguiling, its difficulties made to look effortless, its physicality subtly erotic. Damen looked at Ancel with new respect. This performance required training, discipline and athleticism, which Damen admired. It was the first time that Damen had seen Veretian pets display skill in anything other than wearing clothes or climbing on top of one another. — C.S. Pacat

Communication is not only about words and numbers. Some thoughts can't be properly expressed in these ways at all. We also think in sounds and images, in movement and gesture, which gives rise to our capacities for music, visual arts, dance, and theater in all their variations. — Ken Robinson

The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement. — Ezra Pound

Life is like an eternal dance. The movements of the dance are choreographed through your awareness. — Deepak Chopra

Unpredictable action is movement's equivalent to a page-turner in literature. On stage, we have certain options to make our moves appear surprising or even shocking. One choice is to remove transitions. We try to construct motion hunks, hunks of action that could be missed if an audience member blinks. — Elizabeth Streb

Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing. — Martha Graham

It's the best gift in the world to be able to get up and dance because it's the best gym. You artistically stretch your brain and you physically stretch your body to a higher point than a singular rotation movement like running. It makes your whole body move in lots of different ways, and it can make you very flexible as well, which is good for later life. — Andrew Stone

Dance is simply the refinement of human movement - walking, running, and jumping. We are all experts. There should be no art form more accessible than dance, yet no art is more mystifying in the public imagination. — Twyla Tharp