“Man must speak, then sing, then dance. The speaking is the brain, the thinking man. The singing is the emotion. The dancing is the Dionysian ecstasy which carries away all.”
—Isadora Duncan
March 2012
61 posts
“The dance exists exclusively in terms of the movement of the body, not only in the obvious sense that the dancer moves, but also in the less apparent sense that its response in the spectator is likewise a matter of body movement.”
—John Martin
“Dancing is a very living art. It is essentially of the moment, although a very old art. A dancer’s art is lived while he is dancing. Nothing is left of his art except the pictures and the memories—when his dancing days are over.”
—Martha Graham
“Basic dance—and I should qualify the word basic—is primarily concerned with motion. So immediately you will say but the basketball player is concerned with motion. That is so—but he is not concerned with it primarily. His action is a means towards an end beyond motion. In basic dance the motion is its own end—that is, it is concerned with nothing beyond itself.”
—Alwin Nikolais
“The dance, just as the performance of the actor, is kinesthetic art, art of the muscle sense. The awareness of tension and relaxation within his own body, the sense of balance that distinguishes the proud stability of the vertical from the risky adventures of thrusting and falling—these are the tools of the dancer.”
—Rudolph Arnheim
“Q: The question I have is which Ballet Russe? Diaghliev’s Ballet Russe, Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo or The Original Ballet Russe?”
—A: Ballet dancer, Tamara Karsavina was only a dancer for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. From what my Dance History class has stated, Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes were the original Ballet Russes. The Ballet Russes folded in 1929 after Diaghilev passed away. All other Ballet Russes were created posthumously in an attempt to revive what Diaghilev created. Karsavina was known notably for also dancing in the Imperial Ballet in Russia and for partnering numerous times with famous Ballet Russes dancer/choreographer, Vaslav Nijinsky.
“What is modern about modern dance is its resistance to the past, its response to the present, its constant redefining if the idea of dance.”
—Marcia Siegel
“Nothing so clearly and inevitably reveals the inner man than movement and gesture. It is quite possible, if one chooses, to conceal and dissimulate behind words or paintings or statues or other forms of human expression, but the moment you move you stand revealed, for good or ill, for what you are.”
—Doris Humphrey
“Dance, one of the oldest forms of artistic expression, requires only the human body for its realization.”
—Igor Youskevitch
“If one had to define one essential gift with which a dancer needs to be endowed, there might be a rush of answers. A beautiful body, grace of line, graciousness of spirit, joy in the work, ability to please, unswerving integrity, relentless ambition towards some abstract perfection. Certainly all these factors determine a dancer’s character, and every element exists in some combination within the performing artist’s presence.”
—Lincoln Kirstein
“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
“I would like to tell all dancers to forget themselves and the desire for self display. They must become completely absorbed in the dance. Even in a classical variation there should never be any thought of a dancer doing a variation—he should become identified with it.”
—Antony Tudor
“It was Anna Pavlova, and no one else, who opened the world to ballet. It was she who did the back-breaking work of pioneering. It was Pavlova who found and cultivated audiences for contemporary ballet companies. Her service to ballet is priceless. No other single human being did more for ballet than she. To all the millions of people for whom she danced she brought little of herself…what remains of Pavlova today is not a movement in the art, not a tendency, not even a series of dances. It is something far less concrete, but possibly more valuable: inspiration.”
—Hilda Dutsova
