Quotes & Sayings About Jazz Dance

I did jazz dance for a few years. — Sharon Van Etten

I began with dance, doing ballet at 3, then tap, jazz, modern. Then I sang in church choirs, learned how to play clarinet and drums, sang with rock bands and only then did I get into musical theatre. — Samantha Barks

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

My nerves did a jitter dance, stuck between two wolves. — Jazz Feylynn

I took several years of dance lessons that included ballet, tap and jazz. They helped a great deal with body control, balance, a sense of rhythm, and timing. — Lynn Swann

I always wanted praise, and I always wanted attention; I won't lie to you. I was a jazz critic, and that wasn't good enough for me. I wanted people to write about me, not me about them. So I thought, 'What could I do? I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't act or anything like that. OK, I can write.' — Harvey Pekar

New Orleans had a great tradition of celebration. Opera, military marching bands, folk music, the blues, different types of church music, ragtime, echoes of traditional African drumming, and all of the dance styles that went with this music could be heard and seen throughout the city. When all of these kinds of music blended into one, jazz was born. — Wynton Marsalis

Hamp would ask me about tempos in the band: 'Jacquet,' he'd say, 'knock off that tempo.' A lot of jazz musicians didn't prefer to play for dancers, which was their loss, really. But good jazz has always had that dance feel. — Illinois Jacquet

Bop is at the end of the road. Now everybody wants dance music. — Dizzy Gillespie

As late as the early '50s, jazz was still, for the most part, a genuinely popular music, a utilitarian, song-based idiom to which ordinary people could dance if they felt like it. — Terry Teachout

They went along a balcony that looked down over the dining room and the dance floor. The lisp of hot jazz came up to them from the lithe, swaying bodies of a high-yaller band. With the lisp of jazz came the smell of food and cigarette smoke and perspiration. The balcony was high and the scene down below had a patterned look, like an overhead camera shot. (Nevada Gas) — Raymond Chandler

I was 16 when I came to New York. I had graduated to a tenor banjo in the school jazz band, and it was kind of boring - just chords, chords, chords. Then my father took me to a mountain music and dance festival in Asheville, North Carolina, and there I saw relatively uneducated people playing great music by ear. — Pete Seeger

All them weird chords which don't mean a thing ... you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to — Louis Armstrong

I wasn't a dancer learning to play Baby Houseman. I was Baby Houseman learning to play a dancer. I was someone who'd never done any Latin dance. I'd taken jazz classes and ballet growing up in New York, so I had dance in me, and I knew I loved it, but I'd never done a dance audition. — Jennifer Grey

My school music teacher, Al Bennest, introduced me to jazz by playing Louis Armstrong's record of "West End Blues" for me. I found more jazz on the radio, and began looking for records. My paper route money, and later, money I earned working after school in a print shop and a butcher shop went toward buying jazz records. I taught myself the alto saxophone and the drums in order to play in my high school dance band. — Bill Crow

I was used to dancing, but only when someone told you what to do. So in the nightclub I was all over the place, I combined everything. Street dance, modern dance, a bit of jazz and ballet, I was Twyla Tharp, I was Alvin Ailey, I was Michael Jackson. I didn't care, I was free. — Madonna Ciccone

I'm a dancer, so I do four hours of dance a week of ballet, jazz, hip hop, contemporary. I also play the piano and I just started learning the guitar. — Ryan Newman

My years of ballet and jazz dance lessons didn't make me any more graceful - they just helped keep me from bumping into the furniture on stage. — Toni Tennille

To have a platform like So You Think You Can Dance, where you're reaching this audience that's been created over the 10 years that they've been on the air. People who didn't know anything about dance and aren't going to go to the theater are learning about it, even if it's ballroom and jazz, by just turning their television ono. They're building this audience that's advanced and educated enough to introduce them to ballet. — Misty Copeland

Now, the instrumentation in the jazz band and the jazz dance band has gone through many evolutions. For instance, in the 'twenties the tradition was two or three saxophones. — Gerry Mulligan

Anyone who's just driven 90 yards against huge men trying to kill them has earned the right to do Jazz hands. — Craig Ferguson

[David] Bowie went on to make best-selling music - funk, dance music, electronic music, while also being influenced by cabaret and jazz. — David Bowie

I learned jazz; that comes from blues. I learned rock; that comes from blues. I learned pop; that comes from blues. Even dance, that comes from blues, with the answer-and-response. — Cyndi Lauper

Bill Monroe spoke of bringing 'ancient tones' into his music with echoes of British and Irish fiddle and bagpipe music, while also delving deeply into American blues, gospel, folk hymnody, and hill country dance music. To that gumbo, he added the invigorating rhythms and harmonies of hot jazz. It was a new kind of American music, named in honor of his band The Blue Grass Boys to be known, simply, as bluegrass. — Paul Zollo

When I started recording, I thought I'd be able to do all kinds of records: jazz, country, dance - and I've always wanted to do a gospel album. — Tom Jones

Charlie Parker lifted jazz music off the dance floor and into the stratosphere! — Joe Lovano

I'm the first one out on the dance floor. In college I had to take jazz, ballet and tap dancing, but, before that, it was just social. — Miles Teller

I was really creative. I started to dance very young. I loved to dance. I begged my mother to put me into dance classes, and finally, in third grade, she did. Tap and jazz, but not ballet. — Laverne Cox

Dance, you jazz-mad puppets of fate, and — Dorothy Parker

In the century of jazz we are likely to overlook the emergence of the waltz as a hot and explosive human expression that broke through the formal feudal barriers of courtly and choral dance styles. — Marshall McLuhan

My nerves did a jitter dance, — Jazz Feylynn

I love dancing, actually. My mother taught children's dance, ballet, tap, jazz ... I'm very flexible. — Michael Angarano

Well, there's another set forward, you see. Up to now you couldn't stand all this dance and jazz music. It was too superficial and frivolous for you. Now you have seen that there's no need to take it seriously and that it can all the same be very agreeable and delightful. And by the way, the whole orchestra would be nothing without Pablo. He conducts it and puts fire into it. — Hermann Hesse

I can dance. I like hip hop and stuff and jazz movements, but I'm horrible in ballet. I tried. — Keke Palmer

Love is kisses and touches and all the little things that make your body flood with emotions such as need, want, protectiveness, jealousy, hurt, and anger. It can take your breath away, or smother you at times, and make you feel like you can't go on. Your heart may race a thousand miles per minute, then slow down, and then race again, just with a simple look. Love is deadly and can kill you from the inside out if you let it. It makes you do stupid, ridiculous things, and say senseless sappy words, or listen to silly love songs, jazz, or dance in the streets, or laugh, or smile. Love is a weapon, or a drug, and can drive a person mad. I know what love is ... — Lyra Parish

I don't really know how dating works," Jared told her. "High school for me was mostly musical numbers. That's how it is in the States, you've seen the movies. Every time someone had an emotional dilemma or epiphany, they would burst into song, and we would all have to break out into perfectly choreographed dance sequences. It took a lot of intensive training. So many jazz squares, no time for love. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Back then he'd hammered out rags as rough as the planks that made up that schoolhouse stage. Over the years he's taken a saw and rasp to those tunes and smoothed them at the edges, sanded them slowly over time with finer and finer grit paper, and applied a polish to them. The songs are comfortable now. People can take their shoes off to dance without fear of a spike in the foot; they can lie back on that smooth and waxed wood to take a nap in the afternoon or make love all night long. Oliver sees himself as a carpenter, a craftsman putting notes and melodies together, fitting them when they will, stepping back to rest and reconsider when they won't. — Richard J. Alley