Quotes & Sayings About Dance Performance

I love a long bath. I love anything creative. I love decorating. I even love just flipping through magazines and vegging out for a while. But I'm also one of those people who loves to work, so I'll sing, dance, work on my next performance, or write whomever it may be about a new idea. — Jennifer Lopez

A lot of festivals can be a jumble of electronic music and rock and roll, and everything's all mixed up - some things are more performance art or light shows or dance parties, and then you'll have a singer-songwriter stuck in the middle to make the changeovers easier. — Jenny O.

I went to performing arts high school, and I took dance and acting every day. Then, I went to Marymount Manhattan College and I have a B.A. in acting, with a concentration in theater performance and a minor in musical theater. I studied there for three years. — Jenna Ushkowitz

Bono told me how to dance in high heels and he also told me about U2's Glastonbury performance and how everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong, including him ripping his trousers on stage. I think he was lunging and his trousers ripped! He was telling me how he had to find a new way of performing that didn't involve moving. — Florence Welch

I am a dancer. I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living ... In each it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes in some area an athlete of God. — Martha Graham

I always wanted to experience what performance would be like without the fourth wall, so I formed a company in Australia, and we did avant-garde theater, playing with gender norms, conversations about race - we just had a box of issues that we wanted to subvert with our stories, with dance. — DeObia Oparei

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

Throughout the performance Levin felt like a deaf person watching a dance. He was quite perplexed when the music stopped and felt very tired as a result of strained attention quite unrewarded. — Leo Tolstoy

So many dancers rely on some sort of magic happening on the stage. They never, for various reasons, work full out in rehearsal. That's very uncreative. They don't discover the kinds of things that add up to a remarkable performance. — Benjamin Harkarvy

The first dance performance I saw was Joffrey Ballet doing 'Billboards' to Prince. — Kyle Abraham

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

The reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living. — Martha Graham

Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera, theater, music and dance are thriving all over the world, but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s. — Camille Paglia

I believe that we learn by practice ... it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which come shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. — Martha Graham

When you step from the wings onto the stage you go from total blackness to a blinding hot glare. After a moment you adjust, but there is that moment. like being inside lightning. — Meg Howrey

'Everything beautiful occurs when the body / is suspended,' Helena Mesa quotes a performance artist who hangs his own pierced body in the air. Mesa's poems are artfully suspended between lyric and narrative, between humans and animals, between Latin America and the U.S., between desire and the difficulty of its fulfillment. Horse Dance Underwater is an inventive, musical, and powerful debut. — Mark Doty

The underlying foundation of all religion is performance - whether it's a tribal dance around a campfire to satisfy the fire god, or a dead religious activity performed week after week by an evangelical Christian with the intent of impressing his God. It's all religious performance, and God isn't impressed by our performance. What impresses Him is faith. — Steve McVey

The audience for 'Lootera' is far less than for my other kind of films. Just because I pulled it off doesn't mean I will change my tastes. I love to watch masala films, and I love to sing, dance and say those larger-than-life dialogues. But whenever I get a chance, and I really feel the connect, I will do a performance-oriented film. — Sonakshi Sinha

So Elizabeth, dare we take the dance floor again in hopes of repeating that splendid performance given by Lydia? — Elizabeth Eulberg

Dance every performance as if it were your last. — Erik Bruhn

I would enjoy venturing into music, as I do write songs and compose music! And, of course, dance, rhythm and performance are in my blood, so eventually I see myself doing something in that area, surely! — Jiah Khan

Before Prax had gotten married, he'd seen a dance performance based on neo-Taoist traditions. For the first hour, it had been utterly boring, and then after that, the small movements of arms and legs and torso, shifting together, bending, and falling away, had been entrancing. The Rocinante slid into place beside an extending airlock port with the same beauty Prax had seen in that dance, but made more powerful by the knowledge that instead of skin and muscles, this was tons of high-tensile steel and live fusion reactors. — James S.A. Corey

Attaining inner peace isn't about letting someone else read your lines; it's about embracing your character and giving the performance of a lifetime. Never be afraid to express your inner thoughts, never be afraid to dance to a different beat because when you shine with self-acceptance, you light up the world." -Lakeysha-Marie Green, Author — Lakeysha-Marie Green

To me, dance is so ethereal and elusive, so much of an illusion. After a performance, that's it. With vocals and music, you have good recordings. — Jamie Wyeth

Kind are her answers, But her performance keeps no day; Breaks time, as dancers. From their own Music when they stray. — Thomas Campion

Danny begins to walk fast and it strikes me that I don't know where we're ultimately headed. This bothers me. I'm calibrated for destination. It's partly why I've been imagining divinity as some sort of beam-me-up-Scotty experience. But maybe transcendence isn't about leaving. It's about being present. Life is a performance piece. Like dance and song, the art is in the process. Like hula and oli, the process is the prayer. — Leigh Ann Henion

People have thought that some of my writing and lines are done by a machine. I'm able to move in a way that's part gestural dance performance, and it's fun for me, so I incorporate that into the painting. — Jose Parla

[Robert Rauschenberg, 1925-2008] helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art - not to mention between art and life. — Michael Kimmelman

I watch the beautiful performance with an ache in my chest.
Then, just when I can't stand the sadness anymore, a dancer floats out from the side of the stage. A dancer in ragged clothes, filthy and half starved. He's not even in ballet shoes. He's just barefoot as he glides out to take his place in the dance.
The other dancers turn to him, and it's clear that he is one of them. One of the lost ones. By the look on their faces, they weren't expecting him. This is not part of the practiced show. He must have seen them onstage and joined in.
Amazingly, the dance continues without a missed beat. The newcomer simply glides into place, and the final dancer who should have danced solo with her missing partner dances with the newcomer.
It is full of joy, and the ballerina actually laughs. Her voice is clear and high, and it lifts us all. — Susan Ee

There are those who dance the notes, and those who dance the music. — Eva Ibbotson

I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired. — Martha Graham

Dance used to do that for me too: a place where there was nothing to do but be me and let everything else fall away. For a lot of the girls on the team, it was all about the performance, but for me, I think it was always about communication. — Emily Henry

But the longer he listened to the King Lear fantasia, the further he felt from any possibility of forming some definite opinion for himself. The musical expression of feeling was ceaselessly beginning, as if gathering itself up, but it fell apart at once into fragments of new beginnings of musical expressions and sometimes into extremely complex sounds, connected by nothing other than the mere whim of the composer. But these fragments of musical expressions, good ones on occasion, were unpleasant because they were totally unexpected and in no way prepared for. Gaiety, sadness, despair, tenderness and triumph appeared without justification, like a madman's feelings. And, just as with a madman, these feelings passed unexpectedly.
All through the performance Levin felt like a deaf man watching people dance. He was in utter perplexity when the piece ended and felt great fatigue from such strained but in no way rewarded attention. — Leo Tolstoy

It is difficult to see the great dance effects as they happen, to see them accurately, catch them fast in memory. It is even more difficult to verbalize them for critical discussion. The particular essence of a performance, its human sweep of articulate rhythm in space and in time has no specific terminology to describe it by. — Martha Graham

A dance performance is rather like going out into a battlefield. You have to hold the attention of as many as five to 10,000 people a lot of whom do not follow your language. — Yamini Krishnamurthy

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

My father-in-law saw me at a dance performance. The next day, I got a phone call, and the caller said, 'I'm Dhirubhai Ambani ... may I talk to Nita?' I said, 'It's a wrong number' and put down the phone. Then he called again ... and I said, 'If you're Dhirubhai Ambani, then I'm Elizabeth Taylor.' — Nita Ambani

She noticed the most important thing of all, which is the dance lesson within the performance. — Zadie Smith

Dance is like wine; it matures with every performance. — Alarmel Valli

When you face a 'performance' that might provoke the 'I'm scared' response, choose love and approach your opportunity as a chance to dance with God. It's more fun than 'Dancing with the Stars!' — Wayne Dyer

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. — Jennifer Dunning

Ballet dancers are a self-chosen elite. To survive and surmount years of disciplinary preparation and seasons of even more arduous performance requires rigid determination and almost mindless self-abnegation. One other factor is difficult to predetermine: without a certain admixture of hysteria - sometimes masking as self-obsession, sometimes even counterfeiting incipient madness - performers, at once acrobats, artists, and animals, make little public impression. — Lincoln Kirstein

One time, the homie Venus[-X] read me; we were on the phone and she was like, "Girl, you keep wearing jeans and t-shirts at your shows, but the music doesn't give that." I was like, "You're right, I need to be the person that I am at school, making dance and choreography. I should think about the whole performance." That's when I put the 1 in my name and started dressing for the occasion. — Le1f

As you wish. But I'd like to change the pace a little. You know, my throat is sore from talking so much. So, what would you think if I tell you about the Sullens through interpretive dance? Honestly, I'm quite good at it, and I usually charge admission, or at the very least ask for a box of treats. But for you, tonight's performance it's on the house. — Stephen Jenner

A major assumption that underlies this selection is that it is only within work that is progressive, experimental or avant-garde that staid, old-fashioned images and ideas about gender can be challenged and alternatives imagined. I have never seen a ballet performance that has not disappointed me. — Ramsay Burt

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. — Twyla Tharp