Quotes & Sayings About Great Dancers

Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too ... — Kurt Vonnegut

Dancers are a great breed of people. And they really want to dance so you don't have to beg them to work. However, dancers sometimes build walls around themselves because they are presenting themselves all the time: dancing is very much a confession. — Suzanne Farrell

Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion. — Martha Graham

There have been many poets who have lived at the fifth center of creativity and never gone ahead - many painters, many dancers, many singers who created great art, but never moved to the third eye. And there have been mystics who have remained with the third eye, knowing their own inner beauty; it is so fulfilling that they thought they had arrived. Somebody is needed to tell you that there is still something more ahead; otherwise, in your ignorance, what you will do is almost unpredictable. — Rajneesh

The Kirov is a great ballet company because it has so many terrific dancers, but it doesn't always know what to do with them. — Robert Gottlieb

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

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion. — Martha Graham

The people of the heart - the painters, the poets, the musicians, the dancers, the actors - are all irrational. They create great beauty, they are great lovers, but they are absolutely unfit in a society that is arranged by the head. Your artists are thought by your society to be almost outcast, a little bit crazy, an insane type of people. Nobody wants his or her children to become musicians or painters or dancers. Everybody wants them to be doctors, engineers, scientists, because those professions pay. Painting, poetry, dance, are dangerous, risky - you may end up just a beggar on the street, playing on your flute. — Osho

They walked to school, talking about how much they were longing for the summer holidays.
"Oh, I am planning things," said Jamie. "Great, great things. I could join a band."
"You gave up the guitar after two lessons."
"Well," he said, "I could be a backup dancer."
"Backup dancers have to wear belly shirts and glitter," said Mae. "So obviously, I support this plan. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Both Rick and Amelia were impressed with their graceful movements. The Balinese dance was artistic with great expression. The dancers seemed to be telling a story through their fingers, hands and body gestures, including head and eye movements. It was amazing. Every gesture was elegant. — Linda Weaver Clarke

We are the dancers in a great play. The Earth is the stage; the sun gives rays. — Debasish Mridha

There's something great about terrible westerns. They look like gay dancers and bad, overwrought dialogue and overacting, black and white sped up horses. — Alec Sulkin

There is something about dance that is actually a great tension. There is something that is incredibly freeing about dancing for dancers who do it. They tend to be really arty and interesting people in real life. At the same time, they have an incredibly rigorous training schedule. — George Nolfi

I'd say the only time I ever get nervous is around great ballet dancers or people I really admire. — Dita Von Teese

I think it's always great to not be the smartest person in the room because I don't want to ever feel like I can't improve upon what I'm doing. I just want to surround myself with people that are better actors than me and better singers and dancers and see what happens. — Drew Seeley

Mr. Balanchine was a great gentleman, and he loved his dancers. He was devoted to his company. He came to the ballet every night, and his presence was felt. It was like the whole company was dancing for him. And if he liked you, he trusted you to be yourself. He didn't try to change you and make you into something you were not. — Patricia McBride

Accounts from Europe indicate that the danse macabre took another form, inspired by the Black Death, rather like our children's rhyme 'Ring o' Ring o' Roses', which refers to the Great Plague. In 1374, a fanatical sect of dancers appeared in the Rhine, convinced that they could put an end to the epidemic by dancing for days and allowing other people to trample on their bodies. It is not recorded whether they recovered but, incredibly, they began to raise money from bystanders. By the time they reached Cologne they were 500 strong, dancing like demons, half-naked with flowers in their hair. Regarded as a menace by the authorities, these dancers macabre were threatened with excommunication. — Catharine Arnold

When the hippie era ended and the hangover began, as idealism gives way to disillusionment, the hair of the marchers and street-dancers kept getting longer, and soon it began to tangle. Free love deteriorated into loveless promiscuity, our great electric Kool-Aid acid test churned out an entire generation of burnt-out old relics, and the hair, once a symbol of freedom, became symbolic of the new face of prison, a lawlessness which taken to its logical extreme would imprison all of society as our growing criminal element took to the streets. — Tommy Walker

I don't have many actors in my family, but I do have a Great Uncle that is a film-maker in Philadelphia, and my great-great-grandparents were Flamenco dancers in the 30's in New York, they were Spanish dancers. — Aubrey Plaza

I used to love to see Willie Pep and Ray Robinson. To me, the epitome of a great athlete is a great boxer. I just love the rhythm of seeing a man dance, slip punches. I loved the dancers and boxers. I would see them and be mesmerized. — Emanuel Steward

I spit upon the dancers painted by Degas. I spit upon their short bodies, their stiff stays, their toes whereupon they spin like peg-tops, above all upon that chambermaid face. They might have looked timeless, Remeses the Great, but not the chambermaid, that old maid history. I spit! I spit! I spit! — W.B.Yeats

The great thing about being the son of Maya Angelou is that I had the good fortune to grow up around some of the greatest black artists, dancers, singers, musicians, and actors of our time. — Guy Johnson

We fall into the great continuing circle of dancers. Some leave the floor, tired but giddy; others have only just arrived. They are eager to wear their new status as ladies, to be paraded about and lauded until they see themselves with new eyes. The fathers beam at their daughters, thinking them perfect flowers in need of their protection, while the mothers watch from the margins, certain this moment is their doing. We create illusions we need to go on. And one day, when they no longer dazzle or comfort, we tear them down, brick by glittering brick, until we are left with nothing but the bright light of honesty. The light is liberating. Necessary. Terrifying. We stand naked and emptied before it. Adn when it is too much for our eyes to take, we build a new illusion to shield us from its relentless truth.
But the girls! Their eyes glow with the fever dream of all they might become. They tell themselves this is the beginning of everything. And who am I to say it isn't? — Libba Bray

At the ballet classes I took when I first came to New York, I would see great dancers like Cynthia Gregory and Lupe Serrano. I would look at them and study what they could do, and what I couldn't do. And then I'd think maybe they should try what I could do. — Twyla Tharp

It was extraordinary 'cause I was 17 years old when I first danced with Edward Villella. And we were both young. But I had seen him dance, and he was already a star. So he was just so gentle and wonderful and kind, and we had a great rapport together. He was one of the most exciting dancers of our day. — Patricia McBride

This is called the Great Snow Dance and it is done every year in Narnia on the first moonlit night when there is snow on the ground. Of course it is a kind of game as well as a dance, because every now and then some dancer will be the least little bit wrong and get a snowball in the face, and then everyone laughs. But a good team of dancers, Dwarfs, and musicians will keep it up for hours without a single hit. On fine nights when the cold and the drum-taps, and the hooting of the owls, and the moonlight, have got into their wild, woodland blood and made it even wilder, they will dance till daybreak. I wish you could see it for yourselves. — C.S. Lewis

That's a traditional Samoan dance. I was lucky that I was able to fly my cousins, who are professional dancers, up from Hawaii and they were able to be in the movie with me. We had a great time. — Dwayne Johnson

Suddenly the dressing-room of La Sorelli, one of the principal dancers, was invaded by half-a-dozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come up from the stage after "dancing" Polyeucte. They rushed in amid great confusion, some giving vent to forced and unnatural laughter, others to cries of terror. Sorelli, who wished to be alone for a moment to "run through" the speech which she was to make to the resigning managers, looked around angrily at the mad and tumultuous crowd. It was little Jammes - the girl with the tip-tilted nose, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose-red cheeks and the lily-white neck and shoulders - who gave the explanation in a trembling voice:

"It's the ghost!" And she locked the door.

- Chapter 1: Is it the Ghost? — Gaston Leroux

To me, this acquirement of nervous, physical, and emotional concentration is the one element possessed to the highest degree by the truly great dancers of the world. Its acquirement is the result of discipline, of energy in the deep sense. That is why there are so few great dancers. — Martha Graham

When everything is added up, the frequent blows weighted against the sporadic triumphs, this is I have to say not just a vocation, it's a great gift. But you also know this, for your work, for your passion, every day is a rededication. Painters, dancers, actors, writers, filmmakers. It's the same for all of you, all of us. Every step is a first step. Every brush stroke is a test. Every scene is a lesson. Every shot is a school. So, let the learning continue. — Martin Scorsese

The defect in wisdom and taste which exists among the majority of dancers is due to the bad education which they generally receive. They apply themselves only to the material side of their art, they learn to jump more or less high, they strive mechanically to execute a number of steps, and like children, who utter a great many words devoid of sense and relation, they execute many phrases of steps devoid of taste and grace. — Jean-Georges Noverre