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Inspiring quotes for the dancer
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Seated dancer. Photo: C. Beers.
Ever felt like quitting? Ever wondered, "What's the use of doing all these pliés?" Here are some thoughts that may help you remember why you love to dance. I’ve collected these quotes over many years, primarily because they inspire me. They are the ideas of some of the greats in the dance field, and the books are well worth checking out from your library. Some of the quotes are just for fun. Enjoy!
On Dancing
Work like you don’t need the money.
Love like you’ve never been hurt.
Dance like there’s nobody watching.
– anonymous, found on an office cubicle wall
Performing . . . means this: To step out on the grand stages of the world, before thousands of rapt and hopeful people, into pristine space, trained and able comrades on either hand, a symphony orchestra at your feet, a carpet of music spread under you each night, to flash and soar–you the ordinary one–to ride violins and trumpets. . . . You are out of yourself–larger and more potent, more beautiful. You are for minutes heroic. This is power. This is glory on earth. And it is yours nightly. – Agnes de Mille, To a Young Dancer
For Agnes de Mille, the purpose of ballet was to “lift up the hearts of those who watch.” – Carol Easton, No Intermissions: The Life of Agnes de Mille
Why do we care so dreadfully? In order to communicate. With whomever will listen. To say what lies behind language. – Agnes de Mille, Omnibus broadcast, 1956
The universe lies before you on the floor, in the air, in the mysterious bodies of your dancers, in your mind. From this voyage no one returns poor or weary. – Agnes De Mille, To A Young Dancer
The dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing…. There are times when the simple dignity of movement can fulfill the function of a volume of words. There are movements which impinge upon the nerves with a strength that is incomparable, for movement has the power to stir the senses and emotions, unique in itself. This is the dancer’s justification for being, and his reason for searching further for deeper aspects of his art. – Doris Humphrey, choreographer
The weightlessness of the dancer repeats the promise of great art: you can levitate off the face of the earth–the art will be there to catch you. – Francine Prose
It took me 20 years of being married to a dancer to figure out that port de bras is not an article of lingerie. – Lowell Beers
When I was nine years old, I took my first ballet class. I remember it chiefly as a great relief.
There was one hour of order and certainty. One hour of exact places to put fingers and feet. There was the music, and if you were lucky, there was grace. – Dianne Wiest, Oscar-winning actress
On the dancing side, my elevation was very poor, my pirouettes likewise, and my arabesque low. So when I considered the matter realistically I could see there was little hope of succeeding. – Margot Fonteyn on her early dancing, from her autobiography
Dearest Miss Fonteyn,
If the way you do everything could be summed up into one word, that word would be the most beautiful word in the world. – letter from a fan to Margot Fonteyn
Dame Margot will be eternally remembered wherever virtuosity is offset by humility, wherever the real and the ideal are harmoniously balanced, wherever candor is tempered with patrician reserve, and wherever beauty is prized. – Alan Kriegsman, “The Radiant Reign of Margot Fonteyn,” The Washington Post, 2/22/91, on her death
Last night she [Maya Plisetskaya, prima ballerina] was the heroine of the ballet. . . . This morning, she is a . . . pupil. . . . And that is how it is every day. Once, when asked how long she had been studying dance, Plisetskaya replied: “Nine years to start with, then for the rest of my life.” – Leonid Zhdanov and Margarita Yussim, The Perfection of Dance, Coombe Books, 1978
“You gonna eat those cheese fries?” – Dave Letterman’s Ten Things a Dancer Would Never Say
There’s no way to describe the experience of watching a great artist. Dancers struggle through hard work and experience to put themselves into ballet. We in the audience do not know why we are moved when we watch them. It's all in that moment. It may be a fleeting emotion, but every time, it’s a gift. – Susan Jaffe, principal dancer of American Ballet Theatre
But the memory of that summer is like a dream to me, a dream of music that is both heard and imagined, that seems to be both itself and its own echo. When I remember it, I think of it as dancing – dancing as if language had surrendered to movement; dancing as if language no longer existed, because words were no longer necessary. – Brian Friel, Dancing at Lughnasa
After the performance Mr. B. came back to my dressing room, and we sat looking at each other in silence for a while. Finally, I said to him, “You know, George, I think Mozartiana is what heaven must be like.” He looked closely at me. “Oh really,” he said, and nodded ever so slightly. There was a look of recognition and serenity on his face. . . . Balanchine at the age of seventy-seven had given us a vision of heaven as he interpreted it from the Lord’s Prayer, “on earth as it is in heaven,” and it was a very beautiful place indeed, a place past desire, where dancers perform for the glory of God. . . . It was because this ballet existed that I could survive the death of the man who made it. – Suzanne Farrell, ballerina, on George Balanchine, from her autobiography, Holding on to the Air, pp. 254-256
There is more to what goes on on a dance floor than the sum of the parts and the movements seen from the outside. To dance is to enter into a mystery, to become lost in it and to lose all sense of the world. . . . But now that I have danced, I know what it is: It is the joy of the dance. . . . And it felt like a kiss from God. – Andree Seu, “The Dance,” World Magazine, 12/18/04
When you do dance, I wish you a wave o’ th’ sea, that you might ever do nothing but that; move still, still so, and own no other function: each your doing, so singular in each particular, crowns what you are doing in the present deeds, that all your acts are queens. – William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
Part 2, On Practicing, is now live at Inspiring quotes for the dancer, part 2.
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