Top 100 Dance Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best dance quotes ever written, picked out of the full dance archive on QuoteForever. You will find David Guetta, Keri Russell, Maya Angelou and Mikhail Baryshnikov among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

And the merry love the fiddle, and the merry love to dance.

2

We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.

3

... in general, the Anglo-Irish do not make good dancers; they are too spritely and conscious; they are incapable of one kind of trance or of being seemingly impersonal. And, for the formal, pure dance they lack the formality: about their stylishness (for they have stylishness) there is something impromptu, slightly disorderly.

4

When you dance and move around it creates a different reaction from the audience - they love it.

5

Storytelling is a very old human skill that gives us an evolutionary advantage. If you can tell young people how you kill an emu, acted out in song or dance, or that Uncle George was eaten by a croc over there, don't go there to swim, then those young people don't have to find out by trial and error.

6

I'm not classically trained or anything, but I'll rip up a dance floor.

7

You remember that my great vision came to me when I was only nine years old, and you have seen that I was not much good for anything until after I had performed the horse dance near the mouth of the Tongue River during my eighteenth summer.

8

Dance has always been my number one. I started when I was seven years old and I've had the opportunity to work with some really amazing artists.

9

There's nothing I like more than being on a dance floor with a thousand people feeling love for humanity.

10

I can get a dance party started pretty much anywhere and anytime.

11

To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.

12

I am trying to walk a tightrope; trying to keep the DJ community happy while trying to spread the message about dance music to more people. That is the mission that I am on.

13

So dance music is now pop music. So now, as a dance producer, what do I have to do? So I'm starting to do alien music, because pop is not pop anymore; we need to go alien to be independent.

14

Justin Bieber stole my haircut. And Axl Rose stole my dance!

15

Opera is the ultimate art form. It has singing and music and drama and dance and emotion and story.

16

They're not particular whether you're playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.

17

The pleasant surprise for me is that when I look into Tony's eyes, he's still 100% present, sharing everything that's going on. Acting with him is like a beautiful dance.

18

Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned.

19

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

20

I never thought of myself in comedy at all... I loved going to the theatre and seeing people wearing beautiful clothes come down the staircase and start to dance.

21

As kids, we spontaneously sing and dance and tell stories, and along the way, someone comes and says, 'No. You shouldn't be doing that.' And we slowly begin to unlearn our passions. I think you have to hold on to those things.

22

No matter how close to yours another's steps have grown, in the end there is one dance you'll do alone.

23

The mob is a sort of bear; while your ring is through its nose, it will even dance under your cudgel; but should the ring slip, and you lose your hold, the brute will turn and rend you.

24

I worked as a secretary, a waitress and a dance teacher - all in high school.

25

I've been in dance schools since I was four. I went to the Brit school. I did adverts and plays.

26

People who can dance and sing are often very good at comedy.

27

I have a dance background. I have an athletic background.

28

I like to dance, but I'm not a dancer.

29

You're here, and the only dance I want is this one.

30

Talent will only take you so far, and it is your ability to feel the music and explore a movement that will bring you the greatest pleasure in dance.

31

Dance music will always be around. People around the world love to dance.

32

I went to my first drum n' bass rave when I was 16 and remember being terrified. Looking around, trying to figure out how to dance to this music, watching some girl in some hot pants, trying little ways to learn her movements.

33

Basically it starts with four months of training, just basic stretching, kicking and punching. Then you come to the choreography and getting ready to put the dance together.

34

Dance has helped me with everything. It was a great foundation for discipline, hard work and, unfortunately, the ever-elusive idea of perfection. It lends itself easily to fight choreography, because that's what it really is. Choreography. And knowing how to move with someone.

35

Dance is definitely what I love doing much more than anything else.

36

She had never been so close to anybody. It was as if they were one being, together, not predator and prey, but partners in a dance.

37

When you dance with the devil, it might as well be a devil who can give you your own corner of hell to rule.

38

I love doing Pilates and dance. It's fun to mix things up and change your program every ten days.

39

In liberal democracy and anxious anarchy, the traditional classic dance, compact of aristocratic authority and absolute freedom in a necessity of order, has never been so promising as an independent expression as it is today.

40

I want to win an Oscar. I want to be known for more than, like, going out. For being the 'party girl'. I hate that. I bust my ass when I'm filming and when I have time off, yeah, I like to go out and dance.

41

To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

42

People think I'm disciplined. It is not discipline. It is devotion. There is a great difference.

43

And my father was a comic. He could play any musical instrument. He loved to perform. He was a wonderfully comedic character. He had the ability to dance and sing and charm and analyze poetry.

44

I mean whatever I do it's important that I put my stamp on it and keep it in my world, whether I'm doing a dance track or something like the Russian album for example.

45

Sometimes, you just have to clear your head and get out to see other things. It is very important to be nourished. I love to go to museums and galleries, I like to see theatre, film, dance - anything creative. It doesn't promise you inspiration, but it nourishes your creative soul, and that's good.

46

What's important is that I'm working with very talented young people.

47

I couldn't live without music. I experienced things through music in different countries where you cannot speak the same language, but the music and the dance relates everything.

48

Disco music in the '70s was just a call to go wild and party and dance with no thought or conscience or regard for tomorrow.

49

Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?

50

I love the song 'I Hope You Dance' by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.

51

I am dumb when it comes to learning dance steps.

52

I love to dance so much. It's one of my guilty pleasures in life and my hobby.

53

I like very little to talk. There are many things I cannot say, I can only feel them and dance them.

54

I think there's no question that Michael Jackson was the foremost entertainer of his generation; perhaps of all time, arguably, taking the skills of a Sammy Davis, Jr., bringing together the street dance of African American urban culture, joining them to the politics of dance, of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly on that sphere alone.

55

Playing on the streets of Iraq, or in Israel or the Gaza strip, I'd sing angry protest songs against war. People would say, 'Make us clap, make us dance, and laugh and sing.' It really made me think about the importance of happy music.

56

On many occasions when I am dancing I've felt touched by something sacred. In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists !

57

My grandmother had a Miss Margaret's School of Dance to teach tap and ballet to kids, but I never studied it. I was raised a Mormon and they're dancing fools. It's the only vice they have - dancing.

58

When a body moves, it's the most revealing thing. Dance for me a minute, and I'll tell you who you are.

59

There comes a moment in a young artist's life when he knows he has to bring something to the stage from within himself. He has to put in something in order to be able to take something.

60

Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other.

61

I've always felt like I can dance.

62

Scotland is one of my favourite places to perform: it's really something special. Scottish audiences are just so enthusiastic; their approach to dance music just feels similar to my own somehow.

63

When playing big festivals, I tend to play big, over the top techno tracks, like hands in the air songs that make sense being played in front of 30,000 people. I steer away from subtlety in the interests of big bombastic dance music.

64

My mother had been a country and western singer but when she moved out to Hollywood found it very difficult to get work so when I was born they put me into dance classes and singing classes as soon as I could walk actually.

65

Success will win you false friends and true enemies - succeed anyway.

66

I don't think women's prisons are environments for dance routines, and I don't think mass murder is humorous.

67

My favorite time to dance is at, like, wedding receptions, when it's all ages and everyone seems to be having fun.

68

I never studied dance, but if you look at 'Wild At Heart,' my mother saw that movie and said, 'You are a dancer. Look at how you're moving: all that strange energy is like modern dance.'

69

Tough guys don't dance. You had better believe it.

70

I admit I do have some drawbacks and limitations as a candidate. Although I am a professional comedian, some of my critics maintain that this is not enough. I cannot deny that I stand before you untested and inexperienced - I only spent two years in television, never as a romantic lead or a song and dance man.

71

It's tiring to be asked the same questions all day long: 'What is Gangnam style?' and 'Teach me how to dance.'

72

One's concentration as a performer must remain centered on the action of which one is a part. For it is in truth only one's own concentration on the imagined reality of the role that can force the audience's attention to that same place.

73

'So You Think You Can Dance' comes on as a high-minded leap up the evolutionary ladder from other reality shows - on this one, you're supposed to learn something, and the guest judges are fellow dance professionals rather than actual celebrities.

74

My goal now is to dance all the dances as long as I can, and then to sit down contented after the last elegant tango some sweet night and pass on because there wasn't another dance left in me.

75

Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

76

Ice dance should not be seen as a rigid conformist form of figure skating. There is a great deal of freedom and originality to be had.

77

I wanted to be Gene Kelly. Well really, I just wanted to dance with Cyd Charisse.

78

Face dance means you don't know what the hell the rest of your body was doing but your face is fierce. That's face dancing.

79

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.

80

You live as long as you dance.

81

There was simply from this quite early age the awareness that the only thing I wanted was to dance.

82

Dance where you can break yourself up to pieces and totally abandon your worldly passions.

83

If you look at Indian movies, every time they wanted an exotic locale, they would have a dance number in Kashmir. Kashmir was India's fairyland. Indians went there because in a hot country you go to a cold place. People would be entranced by the sight of snow.

84

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.

85

People think I like to expose my body. But I don't. It's just because the dance moves require it.

86

Maybe we can use a metaphor for it, out of dance. I think for many years I was aware of the need, in dance and in life, to breathe deeply and to take in more air than we usually take in.

87

We want to be the band to dance to when the bomb drops.

88

Independent dance - and, fine, it's a very good thing that it remains independent - is a much tougher life: all dancers expect that, and accept that there will be periods of not being able to work, provided there are choice moments during the year when they really can work.

89

Soulja Boy is on his dance, down south, young, 18-year-old, comedic swag. It's really just each person's personality; if every rapper had the same swag, it would be kind of boring.

90

I have never had a lap dance in Tampa or any other part of Florida. If I ever did have a lap dance, I don't think I would be discussing television ideas with the girl that was giving it to me.

91

Dance music is my love, is my passion, is my life. I live for my fans and take my art very seriously.

92

The monarchy is finished. It was finished a while ago, but they're still making the corpses dance.

93

I had to dance topless for two years to make cash to pay my bills and save some money. But it was very enlightening, by the way. I'm talking about light from the gutter.

94

When I dance, I love the romance and sexiness of it, and love having it be clear to both dancers that the man leads! But the man has to know what he's doing!

95

I learned to love dance for its own sake.

96

I mean, certainly writing, painting, photography, dance, architecture, there is an aspect of almost every art form that is useful and that merges into film in some way.

97

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

98

I've always liked to dance - I've got a natural rhythm.

99

Sometimes, when I'm alone, I put on six inch heels and wear nothing else and dance around in front of the mirror and do my little stripper dance.

100

If you want a dancer's body, dance. Dance aerobics is my favourite cardio. It's very frustrating if people think you have to become a dancer to do it - you don't.

More Dance quotes

This is the short list. The full dance quotes collection holds every quote on the subject in the archive, and the picture quotes are ready to share as images.

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