Dance

Dance generally refers to human movement either used as a form of expression or presented in a social, spiritual or performance setting.

• At present, the Indian government recognizes eight different classical dance forms, namely Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Odissi, Manipuri, Kuchipudi, Kathakali, Mohiniattam, and Sattriya.
  • Adam M. Pine; Olaf Kuhlke (24 December 2013). Geographies of Dance: Body, Movement, and Corporeal Negotiations. Lexington Books. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-7391-7185-1. 

• Now the old lady fell ill, and it was said that she would not rise from her bed again. She had to be nursed and waited upon, and this was no one’s duty more than Karen’s. But there was a grand ball in the town, and Karen was invited. She looked at the red shoes, saying to herself that there was no sin in doing that; she put the red shoes on, thinking there was no harm in that either; and then she went to the ball; and commenced to dance.
• Dance you shall,” said he, “dance in your red shoes till you are pale and cold, till your skin shrivels up and you are a skeleton! Dance you shall, from door to door, and where proud and wicked children live you shall knock, so that they may hear you and fear you! Dance you shall, dance—!

• Hans Christian Andersen The Red Shoes (1845)

• I have no desire to prove anything by it. I have never used it as an outlet or a means of expressing myself. I just dance.
  • Fred Astaire, Steps in Time (1959), p. 325.

• My dancing days are done.
  • Beaumont and Fletcher, The Scornful Lady (c. 1613; printed 1616), Act V, scene 3.

• DANCE, v.i. To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably with arms about your neighbor's wife or daughter. There are many kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two sexes have two characteristics in common: they are conspicuously innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

• A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
  Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
  Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again,
  And all went merry as a marriage bell.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III (1816), Stanza 21.

• On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
  No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
  To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III (1816), Stanza 22.

• And then he danced;—all foreigners excel
  The serious Angles in the eloquence
  Of pantomime;—he danced, I say, right well,
  With emphasis, and also with good sense—
  A thing in footing indispensable:
  He danced without theatrical pretence,
  Not like a ballet-master in the van
  Of his drill'd nymphs, but like a gentleman.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto XIV, Stanza 38.

• If people stand in a circle long enough, they'll eventually begin to dance.
  • George Carlin, Napalm and Silly Putty (2001)

• There comes a pause, for human strength
  Will not endure to dance without cessation;
  And everyone must reach the point at length
  Of absolute prostration.
  • Lewis Carroll, Four Riddles, no. 1 (1869); reprinted in Phantasmagoria and Other Poems (1919)
• As to dancing, my dear, I never dance, unless I am allowed to do it in my own peculiar way. There is no use trying to describe it: it has to be seen to be believed. [...] Did you ever see the Rhinoceros, and the Hippopotamus, at the Zoological Gardens, trying to dance a minuet together? It is a touching sight.
  • Lewis Carroll, letter to Gaynor Simpson (27 December 1873), in A Selection from the Letters of Lewis Carroll to his Child-Friends, ed. Evelyn M. Hatch, (London: MacMillan, 1933).

• Where dance is, there is the devil.
  • John Chrysostom Homily on Matt.48.3

• Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit.
  • No one dances sober, unless he is insane.
  • Cicero, Pro Murena (Ch. vi, Section 13).

• "The thing about dancers is they're a certain breed. You don't do it to become rich and famous, you don't do it to have a really long career or to be the star, you do it because you can't imagine your life not doing it."
  • Cat Deeley, quote taken from this source:
  • Chandel, Natasha. (May 24, 2012). 'So You Think You Can Dance' Shaking Things Up For Season Nine. MTV.com. Retrieved June 6, 2012.

• When you can tell the story of the song through your movement, it's brilliant. It comes across as so honest and not fake.
  • Napoleon D'umo. (June 2009). So You Think You Can Dance / Secrets Dancers Need 2 Know [Adobe Flash]. Los Angeles: Answers4Dancers. Retrieved July 25, 2009.

• Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
  Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
  With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
  Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
  • Bob Dylan, "Mr. Tambourine Man", Bringing It All Back Home (1965).

• A time to mourn, and a time to Dance.
  • Ecclesiastes, Holy Bible.

• 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, The Four Quartets, "Burnt Norton", II.

• The historical weight of traditional forms (in India) provides both a firm technical base to train in, and a firm place from which to launch into new territories. ‘Distinctive Indian style’ is arguably more about the diversity of styles than anything more unifying. From my individual Western viewpoint as a theatre programmer and producer, I see a lack of professionals to help link artists and their work with the right audiences. It is extremely testing for artists to do the fundraising, marketing, press and publicity and contractual negotiations - as well as have the energy and focus to create fresh, stimulating work."
  • Emma Gladstone quoted in "New shores, uncharted waters". The Hindu. 17 November 2012. 

• Alike all ages: dames of ancient days
  Have led their children through the mirthful maze;
  And the gay grandsire, skill'd in gestic lore,
  Has frisk'd beneath the burden of threescore.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller (1764), line 251.

• We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.
  • Martha Graham, "The American Dance", in Modern Dance, ed. Virginia Stewart (1935).

• How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat. Some dance to remember, some dance to forget.
  • Don Henley, "Hotel California" (1976), Hotel California, Asylum Records

• The bones of this body say, dance.
  Dance the story of life
  • Linda Hogan (writer) Dark. Sweet.: New & Selected Poems (2014)

• Round they went, a circular procession of dancers, each with hands on the hips of the dancer preceding, round and round, shouting in unison, stamping to the rhythm of the music with their feet, beating it, beating it out with hands on the buttocks in front; twelve pairs of hands beating as one; as one, twelve buttocks slabbily resounding. Twelve as one, twelve as one. "I hear Him, I hear Him coming." The music quickened; faster beat the feet, faster, faster fell the rhythmic hands. And all at once a great synthetic bass boomed out the words which announced the approaching atonement and final consummation of solidarity, the coming of the Twelve-in-One, the incarnation of the Greater Being. "Orgy-porgy," it sang, while the tom-toms continued to beat their feverish tattoo:
  • Aldous Huxley Brave New World ch.5

• We have eight costume changes per show and we have amazing dressers (about one dresser for every three Rockettes) that get us on stage, on time, and looking fabulous.
• We have very precise movements that we have to do. There are spots in the line that are more difficult. Because you can imagine if you’re catching a taller lady, there’s going to be more weight on you. It’s about trust and I totally trust all the women that I’m dancing with. It’s difficult, it’s a crowd-pleaser and I love it.
• The costumes, I can’t give you exact numbers, but each costume costs thousands of dollars. So that’s not something they would just hand over to me.

• Rockette Candace Jablonski Interview with a Rockette

• The most immediate way we experience the universe is through our body. This is why contemporary dance is the most honest expression because body movement, as they say, cannot lie. Even if you are pretending, it shows."
  • P Jayachandran quoted in "Let your body feel". The Hindu. 3 December 2012. Retrieved on 16 January 2014. 

• Dance, (Indian or otherwise), like sport trains the body, increases its potential for physical intelligence, accuracy, strength, speed, alignment and develops kinaesthetic awareness. There is style in sport just as there is athleticism in dance.
  • Shobana Jeyasingh quoted in "Dance celebrates its role in Olympics ceremonies whilst dance leaders respond to David Cameron's comments". Dance UK News. 23 August 2012. Retrieved on 16 January 2014. 

• Dancing is generally held to be unlawful [in Islam], although it does not appear to be forbidden in either the Qur'an or the Traditions, but according to al Bukhari, the Prophet expressly permitted it on the day of the great festival. Those who hold it to be unlawful quote the following verse from the Qur'an Surah xvii 39 "Walk not proudly on the earth," as a prohibition, although it does not seen to refer to the subject. The Sufis make dancing a religious exercise, but the Sunni Muslims consider it unlawful.
  • Hughes, T. P. (1986). Dictionary of Islam: : being a cyclopaedia of the doctrines, rites, ceremonies, and customs together with the technical and theological terms, of the Muhammadan religion. Entry DANCING.

• Merrily, merrily whirled the wheels of the dizzying dances
  Under the orchard-trees and down the path to the meadows;
  Old folk and young together, and children mingled among them.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847), Part I, IV.

• The dance of renewal, the dance that made the world, was always danced here at the edge of things, on the brink, on the foggy coast.
  • Ursula K. Le Guin, Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places. Grove Press. 1989. p. 48. ISBN 978-0-8021-3529-2. 

• Ghritachi and Menaka and Rambha and Purvachitti and Swayamprabha and Urvashi and Misrakeshi and Dandagauri and Varuthini and Gopali and Sahajanya and Kumbhayoni and Prajagara and Chitrasena and Chitralekha and Saha and Madhuraswana, these and others by thousands, possessed of eyes like lotus leaves, who were employed in enticing the hearts of persons practising rigid austerities, danced there. And possessing slim waists and fair large hips, they began to perform various evolutions, shaking their deep bosoms, and casting their glances around, and exhibiting other attractive attitudes capable of stealing the hearts and resolutions and minds of the spectators.
  • Mahabharata, Book III: Vana Parva, Section 43

• Come, knit hands, and beat the ground
  In a light fantastic round.
  • John Milton, Comus (1637), line 143

• I've seen her dancing; to hell with romancing.
  • Sir Mix-a-Lot, "Baby Got Back" (1992), Mack Daddy, New York: Reprise Records

• Ich würde nur an einen Gott glauben, der zu tanzen verstünde.
  • I would only believe in a God that knows how to dance.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885), Part I, Chapter 7.

• Others import yet nobler arts from France,
  Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance.
  • Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (1728 to 1743), Book IV, line 597.

• Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day,
  Charm'd the small-pox, or chas'd old age away;
  * * * * * *
  To patch, nay ogle, might become a saint,
  Nor could it sure be such a sin to paint.
  • Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1712), Canto V, line 19.

• Dance is about saying something. If you ain’t got nothin' to say, get off the dance floor.
  • LaVaughn Robinson, (June 22, 2002) at Plenary Session of the Society of Dance History Scholars, Philadelphia, PA. Taken from this source:
    Huntington, Carla. Theorizing Hip Hop Dance. Hip Hop Dance: Meanings and Messages. p. 19. MacFarland & Co., 2007. ISBN 0-786-42991-7.

• They have measured many a mile,
  To tread a measure with you on this grass.
  • William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595-6), Act V, scene 2, line 186.

• He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
  To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard III (c. 1591), Act I, scene 1, line 12.

• For you and I are past our dancing days.
  • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act 1, scene 5.

• When you do dance, I wish you
  A wave o' th' sea, that you might ever do
  Nothing but that.
  • William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act IV, scene 4, line 140.

• I always thought dancing improper; but it can't be since I myself am dancing.
  • The Red Cow in P. L. Travers' Mary Poppins, Ch. 5 "The Dancing Cow" (1934)

• It is sweet to dance to violins
  When Love and Life are fair:
  To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
  Is delicate and rare:
  But it is not sweet with nimble feet
  To dance upon the air!
  • Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), Part II, st. 9.

• O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
  How can we know the dancer from the dance?
  • William Butler Yeats, "Among School Children" st. 8, The Tower (1928).

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 156-158.

• This dance of death which sounds so musically
  Was sure intended for the corpse de ballet.
  • Anonymous, On the Danse Macabre of Saint-Saëns.

• O give me new figures! I can't go on dancing
  The same that were taught me ten seasons ago;
  The schoolmaster over the land is advancing,
  Then why is the master of dancing so slow?
  It is such a bore to be always caught tripping
  In dull uniformity year after year;
  Invent something new, and you'll set me a skipping:
  I want a new figure to dance with my Dear!
  • Thomas Haynes Bayly, Quadrille a la Mode.

• Imperial Waltz! imported from the Rhine
  (Famed for the growth of pedigrees and wine),
  Long be thine import from all duty free,
  And hock itself be less esteem'd than thee.
  • Lord Byron, The Waltz, line 29.

• Endearing Waltz—to thy more melting tune
  Bow Irish jig, and ancient rigadoon.
  Scotch reels, avaunt! and country-dance forego
  Your future claims to each fantastic toe!
  Waltz—Waltz alone—both legs and arms demands,
  Liberal of feet, and lavish of her hands.
  • Lord Byron, The Waltz, line 109.

• Hot from the hands promiscuously applied,
  Round the slight waist, or down the glowing side.
  • Lord Byron, The Waltz, line 234.

• What! the girl I adore by another embraced?
  What! the balm of her breath shall another man taste?
  What! pressed in the dance by another's man's knee?
  What! panting recline on another than me?
  Sir, she's yours; you have pressed from the grape its fine blue,
  From the rosebud you've shaken the tremulous dew;
  What you've touched you may take. Pretty waltzer—adieu!
  • Sir Henry Englefield, The Waltz, Dancing.

• Such pains, such pleasures now alike are o'er,
  And beaus and etiquette shall soon exist no more
  At their speed behold advancing
  Modern men and women dancing;
  Step and dress alike express
  Above, below from heel to toe,
  Male and female awkwardness.
  Without a hoop, without a ruffle,
  One eternal jig and shuffle,
  Where's the air and where's the gait?
  Where's the feather in the hat?
  Where the frizzed toupee? and where
  Oh! where's the powder for the hair?
  • Catherine Fanshawe, The Abrogation of the Birth-Night Ball.

• To brisk notes in cadence beating
  Glance their many-twinkling feet.
  • Thomas Gray, Progress of Poesy, Part I, Stanza 3, line 10.

• And the dancing has begun now,
  And the dancers whirl round gaily
  In the waltz's giddy mazes,
  And the ground beneath them trembles.
  • Heinrich Heine, Book of Songs, Don Ramiro, Stanza 23.

• Twelve dancers are dancing, and taking no rest,
  And closely their hands together are press'd;
  And soon as a dance has come to a close,
  Another begins, and each merrily goes.
  • Heinrich Heine, Dream and Life.

• He who esteems the Virginia reel
  A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal,
  And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery
  Than crushing His African children with slavery,
  Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillon
  Are mounted for hell on the devil's own pillion,
  Who, as every true orthodox Christian well knows,
  Approaches the heart through the door of the toes.
  • James Russell Lowell, Fable for Critics (1848), line 492.

• Come and trip it as ye go,
  On the light fantastic toe.
  • John Milton, L'Allegro, line 33.

• Dancing in the chequer'd shade.
  • John Milton, L'Allegro, line 96.

• Dear creature!—you'd swear
  When her delicate feet in the dance twinkle round,
  That her steps are of light, that her home is the air,
  And she only par complaisance touches the ground.
  • Thomas Moore, Fudge Family in Paris, Letter V, line 50.

• I know the romance, since it's over,
  'Twere idle, or worse, to recall;—
  I know you're a terrible rover;
  But, Clarence, you'll come to our ball.
  • Winthrop Mackworth Praed, Our Ball.

• I saw her at a country ball;
  There when the sound of flute and fiddle
  Gave signal sweet in that old hall,
  Of hands across and down the middle
  Hers was the subtlest spell by far
  Of all that sets young hearts romancing:
  She was our queen, our rose, our star;
  And when she danced—oh, heaven, her dancing!
  • Winthrop Mackworth Praed, The Belle of the Ball.

• He, perfect dancer, climbs the rope,
  And balances your fear and hope.
  • Matthew Prior, Alma, Canto II, line 9.

• Once on a time, the wight Stupidity
  For his throne trembled,
  When he discovered in the brains of men
  Something like thoughts assembled,
  And so he searched for a plausible plan
  One of validity,—
  And racked his brains, if rack his brains he can
  None having, or a very few!
  At last he hit upon a way
  For putting to rout,
  And driving out
  From our dull clay
  These same intruders new—
  This Sense, these Thoughts, these Speculative ills—
  What could he do? He introduced quadrilles.
  • John Ruskin, The Invention of Quadrilles.

• We are dancing on a volcano.
  • Comte de Salvandy, at a fête given to the King of Naples (1830).

• Inconsolable to the minuet in Ariadne!
  • Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Critic, Act II, scene 2.

• While his off-heel, insidiously aside,
  Provokes the caper which he seems to chide.
  • Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Pizarro, The Prologue.

• But O, she dances such a way!
  No sun upon an Easter-day,
  Is half so fine a sight.
  • Sir John Suckling, A Ballad Upon a Wedding, Stanza 8.

• Dance light, for my heart it lies under your feet, love.
  • John Francis Waller, Kitty Neil, Dance Light.

• And beautiful maidens moved down in the dance,
  With the magic of motion and sunshine of glance:
  And white arms wreathed lightly, and tresses fell free
  As the plumage of birds in some tropical tree.
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, Cities of the Plain, Stanza 4.

• Jack shall pipe, and Jill shall dance.
  • George Wither, Poem on Christmas.

Larry Chang (2006). Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing. Gnosophia Publishers. p. 189. ISBN 978-0-9773391-0-5. 

• Sports and fitness are not the only media of physical experience that use the body as a source of enjoyment, for in fact a broad range of activities on rhythmic or harmonious movements to generate flow. Among these dance is probably the oldest and most significant, both for its universal appeal and because of its potential complexity…But just as with athletics, one certainly need not become a professional to enjoy controlling the expressive potential of the body.
  • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, p. 189.

• Dancing symbolizes the t rhythmic, patterned movements of life itself. Music and dance amplify and make manifest to our senses the unheard tones and unseen waves that weave together the matter of existence. Even when we are sitting most still or resting in deep sleep, the atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, organs and systems of our body dance in astounding harmony and exchange the ambient energies from air, water, food and invisible electromagnetic radiation.
  • Yaya Diallo, p. 189.

• One you have danced, you always dance.
  • Judith Jamison, p. 189.

• Dance to the song of life.
  • Katherine Hepburnin, p. 189.

• Of what is the body made!
  It is made of emptiness and rhythm.
  At the ultimate heart of the body , at the heart of.
  the world there is no solidity…there is only the dance.
  • George B.Leonard, p. 189.

• The truest expression of people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie.
  • Agnes de Mille, p. 189.

• The dance is strong magic. Te dance is spirit.It turns the body to liquid steel. It makes it vibratelike a guitar. The body can fly without wings. It can sing without voice. The dance is strong magic.
  • Pearl Primus, p. 189.

• Never trust spiritual leader who cannot dance.
  • Who: Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita)

• People dance because dance can change things. One move can bring people together. One move can set a whole generation free. One move can make you believe like you're something more. … Dance can give hope.
  • Who: Moose (Adam Sevani)