Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The music industry used to be able to control a single dance on the very smallest level of when people are supposed to hear it, and when they're supposed to start liking it, and when they're supposed to start buying it. And that's trashed, you know, that big machine that takes control and works albums for a long period.
I love nature like nothing else. Before I moved to Switzerland, my home was a flat in London with a garden. In those snatched moments away from dance, I did typical weekend things like pruning, planting, and weeding. I planted fruit trees and even had a vegetable garden, but I wasn't around enough, so it was a disaster.
The best beauty secret, besides sleep and plenty of water, is do whatever it is - before you go out, before you need to feel beautiful - do whatever makes you feel confident. If it's putting on a great dance record and rocking out in your apartment, do it. If kissing someone for 10 minutes makes you feel confident, do it.
Classical virtuosity is more than technique, line, proportion, and balance. It is as if the performer and spectator come together to hold in their hands a bird with a broken wing. The creature can be felt to stir, to struggle for freedom. Its life responds to human warmth; its wing might brush your check as it flies away.
It used to be said that when the Baal Shem Tov came into a town, his impact was so strong, he didn't have to speak. His disciples had to dance or to sing or to preach to have the same effect. I think a real messenger, myself or anyone, by the very fact that he is there as a person, as a symbol, could have the same impact.
'Glee' is very easy to clown because I feel like it's just crumbling. 'Smash!' 'Smash' is the ultimate. I love it because I'm all about theater. I did plays in high school and college, and it totally brings me back to that feeling: how excited you get on opening night, how it sucks when you're not learning the dance moves.
March is a month without mercy for rabid basketball fans. There is no such thing as a 'gentleman gambler' when the Big Dance rolls around. All sheep will be fleeced, all fools will be punished severely... There are no Rules when the deal goes down in the final weeks of March. Even your good friends will turn into monsters.
Sometimes you feel like people go, 'Oh, he just does funny dances,' or 'That's cute.' It drives me a little crazy when someone does a dance number where all they do is kick to their head for five minutes, and everyone's like, 'That choreography is amazing.' It takes a lot to choreograph a number that also gets laughs in it.
Most people in the Western world grow up with the received wisdom that Mozart was a genius. But few people necessarily know why. More than anyone else, he captured this something which is the human condition, the fine line that we all constantly dance between joy and pain, between absolute happiness and absolute heartbreak.
When I was 16, I moved to Torrance, California to train at a more advanced studio, and by 19, I joined the American Ballet Theatre in New York. It all happened so fast - it was pretty unheard of that someone could train for so few years and become a professional at one of the most elite dance companies in the United States.
I think there is some truth to the fact that yeah, okay, cool, obviously the more mainstream kind of easier-to-grasp-onto dance music has become popular, but that holds true with almost any genre. It wasn't like the Sex Pistols hit the radio. It was poppier versions of that is what hit. It's never, like, the true core stuff.
Directing a movie is a little bit like being back in student government and putting on the homecoming dance. You're like, 'You put up the streamers, and you hire the DJ, and you get the punch bowl.' Some people are just like, 'This dance sucks.' And you're like, 'No no, this dance is awesome!' You have to be really positive.
There's a lot of material from my life in my books, but they're not really autobiographical, in the sense that they're not about my life. So, in 'A Feather on the Breath of God' I write about my parents, I write about this Russian immigrant, I write about the world of dance, but it isn't an autobiography; so much is left out.
I'm not attracted to naturalism, I'm not attracted to behavior, I'm attracted to dance. I'm attracted to gesture, I'm attracted to singing with your voice, as opposed to having a natural manner. I'm a theater actor first, so that probably influences a lot of my approach. And I think in many ways, naturalism has ruined movies.
You know, if you really want to fiddle the old-time way, you've got to learn the dance. The contra-dances, hoedowns. It's all in the rhythm of the bow. The great North Carolina fiddle player Tommy Jarrell said, 'If a feller can't bow, he'll never make a fiddler. He might make a violin player, but he'll never make no fiddler.'
I repeat the wake-up, the workout, the quick shower, the breakfast of three hard-boiled egg whites and a cup of coffee, the hour to make my morning calls and deal with correspondence, the two hours of stretching and working out ideas by myself in the studio ... That's my day, every day. A dancer's life is all about repetition.
It is difficult to see the great dance effects as they happen, to see them accurately, catch them fast in memory. It is even more difficult to verbalize them for critical discussion. The particular essence of a performance, its human sweep of articulate rhythm in space and in time has no specific terminology to describe it by.
'Botanicula' tells the story of a group of twigs, nuts, and leaves trying to escape with the life essence of a tree in tow before nasties from another world destroy them and everything else in their path. Yes, it's a point-and-click adventure game, but behind every click, there's a bit of joy to be found. Bugs sing. Bees dance.
... 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.
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.
Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera, theater, music and dance are thriving all over the world, but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s.
In Hinduism, Shiva the Cosmic Dancer, is perhaps the most perfect personification of the dynamic universe. Through his dance, Shiva sustains the manifold phenomena in the world, unifying all things by immersing them in his rhythm and making them participate in the dance - a magnificent image of the dynamic unity of the Universe.
I'm not really a girly girl, so for the most part, I'm really into wearing baggy clothes. A little on the grungy side of things for the dance world. I'm not really into the tutus or the flower hair clips, either. As dancers, we're pretty much next to naked with each other all day, so you kind of get used to being not so clothed.
Art is the heart's explosion on the world. Music. Dance. Poetry. Art on cars, on walls, on our skins. There is probably no more powerful force for change in this uncertain and crisis-ridden world than young people and their art. It is the consciousness of the world breaking away from the strangle grip of an archaic social order.
The serious is the most difficult branch of dancing, it requires a close study, and cannot be duly appreciated but by connoisseurs and men of a refined and pure taste. She who excels in it deserves the highest applause. A correct execution of an adagio is the ne plus ultra of our art; I look on it as the touchstone of the dancer.
The way to heaven is too steep, too narrow for men to dance in and keep revel rout. No way is large or smooth enough for capering rousters, for jumping, skipping, dancing dames but that broad, beaten, pleasant road that leads to hell. The gate of heaven is too narrow for whole rounds, whole troops of dancers to march in together.
One of the beautiful gifts of dance is that you're so in tune with your body so early on. I was very comfortable in my skin at a very early age, performing onstage and wearing interesting costumes. And I give so much credit to my mom - she never made me feel that my costume was wrong, or bad, even when there was not a lot to them!
From the beginning, about the rude altar of the god, to the days of Goethe, of Leopardi, and of Victor Hugo, the poet is the leader in the dance of life; and the phrase by which we name his singularity, the poetic temperament, denotes the primacy of that passion in his blood with which the frame of other men is less richly charged.
Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred.In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists.
My mum enrolled me in this free dance class because I had so much energy in the night-time, and she just wanted me to go to sleep. I ended up falling in love with dancing, singing, acting, the whole entertainment world. Then, my mum ended up taking on an extra job so she could fund me to take singing lessons or go to drama classes.
It doesn't make sense for me to try to be, like, a dance dude who only releases two 12-inches a year and then plays every weekend. Making an album, you get to put out a body of work that shows a lot of different sides of you. And you get to work on it for an intense period of time and promote that album. And then you get to move on.
I felt that I didn't want to be in show business anymore. I felt that I wanted to be a farmer. I was milking cows and shoveling terrible stuff and working all day. By the end of the day, all I wanted was my tap shoes - I thought, 'What am I doing? I better get back where I belong on the stage where we work at night and can sleep late!
I can't really hear the audience applause when I'm on stage. I'm totally immersed in the piece. But sometimes I get a lot of it and wonder, "Now, why did they applaud here?" If it's a white crowd, they usually applaud because they think it's a pretty movement. If it's a black crowd, it's usually because they identify with the message.
When we moved to England in 1986, I was ten years old and I didn't know anything about punk or hip hop. The only words I knew in English were 'dance' and 'Michael Jackson.' We got put in a flat in Mitchum, and the council gave us second hand furniture, second hand clothes and a second hand radio that I took to bed with me every night.
It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance — lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt
In some ways, what 'Hamilton' has done for Broadway shows - what it has done for the interpretation of history and how it fused all these worlds together into this modern, contemporary, hip-hop field, and delivered it in such an incredible way - we were inspired to do a similar thing for ballroom dancing and for dance shows in general.
I'm a teller of stories. I put bloody skins on my back and dance around the fire, and I say what the hunt was like. It's not erudite; it's not intellectual. I sail, run dogs, ride horses, play professional poker, and tell stories about the stuff I've been through. And I'm still a romantic; I still want Bambi to make it out of the fire.
The fact that I have done films down South didn't boost or hamper my chances here. In fact, I was still shooting for both my Telugu films when I met Ashu sir for 'Mohenjo Daro.' During the audition, he gave me five scenes with lengthy dialogues. Once I cleared them, he gave me a song to dance to. So, my Bollywood entry was no cakewalk.
I love to dance, so I'm definitely always the first one out on the dance floor. And when it comes to guys, I don't get shy. So if I wasn't with a date, I wouldn't have a problem going up to a guy and just saying, 'Are you gonna dance with me?' Trust me, it'll work for you too! Guys like it when you aren't afraid to make the first move.
I will make an average man into an average dancer, provided he be passably well made. I will teach him how to move his arms and legs, to turn his head. I will give him steadiness, brilliancy and speed; but I cannot endow him with that fire and intelligence, those graces and that expression of feeling which is the soul of true pantomime.
One is born to be a dancer. No teacher can work miracles, nor will years of training make a good dancer of an untalented pupil. One may be able to acquire a certain technical facility, but no one can ever 'acquire an exceptional talent.' I have never prided myself on having an unusually gifted pupil. A Pavlova is no one's pupil but God's.
Melissa Barak, an ex-City Ballet dancer and sometime choreographer, has put together an unspeakably dopey and incompetent mess called 'Call Me Ben,' combining ultra-generic dance, terrible dialogue and disastrous storytelling, about the founding of Las Vegas by the gangster Bugsy Siegel, who insists, violently, on being addressed as 'Ben.'
Bono told me how to dance in high heels and he also told me about U2's Glastonbury performance and how everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong, including him ripping his trousers on stage. I think he was lunging and his trousers ripped! He was telling me how he had to find a new way of performing that didn't involve moving.
Dancing is, in itself, a very trifling and silly thing: but it is one of those established follies to which people of sense are sometimes obliged to conform; and then they should be able to do it well. And though I would not have you a dancer, yet, when you do dance, I would have you dance well, as I would have you do everything you do well.
What's happening to movie critics is no different from what has been meted out to book, dance, theater, and fine-arts reviewers and reporters in the cultural deforestation that has driven refugees into the diffuse clatter of the Internet and Twitter, where some adapt and thrive - such as Roger Ebert - while others disappear without a twinkle.
'Wanna Be That Song' has everything I want to say about love and about what I'm trying to be. I wanna be that part of your life, that song that means so much to you, the one that takes you back to that special place... the song that makes you laugh, the song that makes you cry when you need to cry, that makes you dance when you need to dance.
String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe - from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary stars; from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the majestic swirl of heavenly galaxies - are reflections of one, grand physical principle, one master equation.
The body moves through space every day, and in architecture in cities that can be orchestrated. Not in a dictatorial fashion, but in a way of creating options, open-ended sort of personal itineraries within a building. And I see that as akin to cinematography or choreography, where episodic movement, episodic moments, occur in dance and film.
I grew up listening to bands like the Cure, Joy Division, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance - these are the bands that I actually grew up with, and I always had these things in my taste, too. And I always loved industrial music as well: I listened to Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Cabaret Voltaire. And shoegaze bands like Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine.
I tried for a long time to make DJ-able dance tracks that were more specific to the stuff that I was playing. Ultimately, I found I wasn't really capable of doing that. The only type of music I was able to make that really made me feel something would just come straight from my heart or straight from whatever emotions I was feeling at that time.