Dance

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

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  • 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.
  • My dancing days are done.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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).
  • Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit.
    • No one dances sober, unless he is insane.
    • Cicero, Pro Murena (Ch. vi, Section 13).
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • Come, knit hands, and beat the ground
    In a light fantastic round.
  • Others import yet nobler arts from France,
    Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance.
  • 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.
  • Dance is about saying something. If you ain’t got nothin' to say, get off the dance floor.
  • 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?

[edit] Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

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!
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Hot from the hands promiscuously applied,
    Round the slight waist, or down the glowing side.
  • 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!
  • 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?
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Come and trip it as ye go,
    On the light fantastic toe.
  • Dancing in the chequer'd shade.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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!
  • He, perfect dancer, climbs the rope,
    And balances your fear and hope.
  • 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.
  • We are dancing on a volcano.
  • While his off-heel, insidiously aside,
    Provokes the caper which he seems to chide.
  • But O, she dances such a way!
    No sun upon an Easter-day,
    Is half so fine a sight.
  • Dance light, for my heart it lies under your feet, love.
  • 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.
  • Jack shall pipe, and Jill shall dance.

[edit] Films

[edit] The Next Karate Kid

[edit] Step Up 3D

  • 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.

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