Quotes about dancing
page 10

“The Brahmans who were custodians of the idols and idol-houses, and “teachers of the infidels”, also received their share of attention from the soldiers of Allãh. Our citations contain only stray references to the Brahmans because they have been compiled primarily with reference to the destruction of temples. Even so, they provide the broad contours of another chapter in the history of medieval India, a chapter which has yet to be brought out in full. The Brahmans are referred to as magicians by some Islamic invaders and massacred straight away. Elsewhere, the Hindus who are not totally defeated and want to surrender on some terms, are made to sign a treaty saying that the Brahmans will be expelled from the temples. The holy cities of the Hindus were “the nests of the Brahmans” who had to be slaughtered before or after the destruction of temples, so that these places were “cleansed” completely of “kufr” and made fit as “abodes of Islam”. Amîr Khusrû describes with great glee how the heads of Brahmans “danced from their necks and fell to the ground at their feet”, along with those of the other “infidels” whom Malik Kãfûr had slaughtered during the sack of the temples at Chidambaram. Fîrûz Shãh Tughlaq got bags full of cow’s flesh tied round the necks of Brahmans and had them paraded through his army camp at Kangra. Muhmûd Shãh II Bahmanî bestowed on himself the honour of being a ghãzî, simply because he had killed in cold blood the helpless BrãhmaNa priests of the local temple after Hindu warriors had died fighting in defence of the fort at Kondapalli. The present-day progressives, leftists and dalits whose main plank is anti-Brahminism have no reason to feel innovative about their ideology. Anti-Brahminism in India is as old a the advent of Islam. Our present-day Brahmin-baiters are no more than ideological descendants of the Islamic invaders. Hindus will do well to remember Mahatma Gandhi’s deep reflection--“if Brahmanism does not revive, Hinduism must perish.””

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Feeling, History, Teachers, Dance

“He Robert Rauschenberg was a kind of enfant terrible at the time [around 1960] and I thought of him as an accomplished professional. He’d already had a number of shows, knew everybody, had been to Black Mountain College in South Carolina, working with all those avant-garde people.... Rauschenberg focused very much on working. I was prepared to do that, too. He was also involved with Merce Cunningham dance group and totally unconcerned with his success, in the cliché term. All of the activity had a lively quality, quite separate from any commercial situation.... [Rauschenberg moved into a loft in Jaser John's building and they very closely worked together for a couple of years]. You get a lot by doing. It's very important for a young artist to see how things are done. The kind of exchange we had was stronger than talking. If you do something then I do something then you do something, it means more than what you say.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Once Established, says Jasper Johns...,Grace Glueck, New York Times, 16 October 1977, sec. 2 pp. 1-31
1970s

People, Mountain, Time, Success

“There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"Daddy"
Ariel (1965)

Heart, Dance

“As for presumption, I honestly couldn’t care less. Truth can’t be danced around, not out here, not now, not ever again.”

Steven Erikson book Gardens of the Moon

Source: Gardens of the Moon (1999), Chapter 1 (p. 25)

Truth, Dance

“I think I was born to dance. That’s what my grandmother told me. So it was always in my system.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

In There's no slowing down for Vyjayanthimala, 28 August 2013, 12 January 2014, New Indian Express http://www.newindianexpress.com/entertainment/tamil/Theres-no-slowing-down-for-Vyjayanthimala/2013/08/28/article1755083.ece,

Thinking, Dance

“God is Love and Love is real, yet the dead are dancing with the dead”

Aaron Weiss

The Soviet.
Catch For Us The Foxes (2004)

Love, God, Dance, Dead

“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!”

Henry Englefield (1752–1822) British antiquarian

Sir Henry Englefield, The Waltz, Dancing. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 156-158.

Girl, Dance

“What is this free enterprise system? It is the law of the jungle applied to economics. It is the law of every man for himself, as the elephant said when he was dancing among the chickens. That is not a bad philosophy if, like the hon. member for York - Sunbury, you happen to be in the elephant class, but it is likely to be depressing if you are a farmer or worker, and belong in the chicken group. Free enterprise means unrestricted competition; the race to the swift and the battle to the strong; nature red in tooth and claw.”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

Budget Debate, House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, March 22, 1943.

Law, Nature, Strong, Dance

“We're drinking and we're dancing
but there's nothing really happening.
The place is dead as Heaven on a Saturday night.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"Closing Time"
The Future (1992)

Drink, Dance, Night, Dead

“So from a brazen vase the trembling stream
Reflects the lunar or the solar beam:
Swift and elusive of the dazzled eyes,
From wall to wall the dancing glory flies:
Thence to the ceiling shoot the glancing rays,
And o'er the roof the quivering splendor plays.”

Christopher Pitt (1699–1748) English poet

Book VIII, line 33
The Æneid of Virgil (1740)

Dance

“With no words, with no song
You can dance the dream with your body on
And this curve, is your smile
And this cross, is your heart
And this line, is your path
Oh it's gonna be the way you always thought it would be
But it's gonna be no illusion
Oh it's gonna be the way you always dreamt about it
But it's gonna be really happening to ya…”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Red Shoes (1993)

Smile, Dreams, Way, Heart

“For the first time since I began acting, I feel that I've found my place in the world, that there's something out of my own culture which i can express and perhaps help others preserve.. i have found out now that the African natives had a definite culture a long way beyond the culture of the Stone age…an integrated thing, which is still unspoiled by western influences…I think the Americans will be amazed to find how many of the modern dance steps are relics of African heritage.”

Paul Robeson (1898–1976) American singer and actor

As quoted in Paul Robeson : The Whole World in His Hands (1981) by Susan Robeson, p. 72

Age, World, Way, Feeling

“If you hear a song you like, start dancing. That's what I do, I'll just start dancing, and that's it. That's all there is to it.”

Krist Novoselic (1965) Croatian-American rock musician

34:23–34:29 "Nirvana's Krist Novoselic on Punk, Politics, & Why He Dumped the Dems" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4TPRH2uK9w

Dance

“The album is very different from the all the other albums today. First of all, the album was one year delayed because I wasn’t happy and every time I did an album it was unofficially finished. I had some time to listen to some new songs and plug into some music programs and discovered this new song and delayed the release for a month, because I wanted to update the new tracks to these new sounds I found… so then when I did that all the other songs sounded like crap compared to the new ones! So I said f*** this I need to reproduce the other ones as well. Then I scrapped a few songs and produced new ones. So to produce this album I pretty much produced maybe about 50 tracks and picked out the best of them. You know when you buy an album from a producer/artist, you kind of hear the same sound repeating in each song, you hear the same sound repeating, but this album is like every song is individual. Like you wont find two songs which have the same sound. Each song is completely different which I think kind of represents what I do because I produce everything and I love producing everything. Sometimes I’m in the mood to produce you know a dance song, sometimes I’m in the mood to produce an R&B song, it’s just interesting because I just want to show people that I can deliver to all ears.”

Basshunter Calling Time

Guestlist interview with Ria Talsania (10 July 2013) https://guestlist.net/article/9219/catching-up-with-basshunter Calling Time

Love, Happiness, People, Music

“We can say that the United States runs the world like the Taliban ran Afghanistan. Cuba is dealt with like a woman caught outside not wearing her burkha. Horrific sanctions are imposed on Iraq in the manner of banning music, dancing, and kite-flying in Kabul. Jean-Bertrand Aristide is banished from Haiti like the religious police whipping a man whose beard is not the right length.”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

Introduction to Freeing the World to Death

World, Music, Dance, Flying

“I was tired of painting. So many collectors bought paintings and locked them in bank vaults. The stained-glass windows allowed me to make public art…. One day a woman stopped me in the street to talk to me about Champ-de-Mars metro station. "Whether it's sunny, rainy, or snowing, I love your stained-glass windows at Champ-de-Mars. Those big dancing shapes always warm my heart." That woman was neither a collector nor an art critic, but she understood the meaning I meant to give that work.”

Marcelle Ferron (1924–2001) Canadian artist

Original in French: J'étais dégoûtée de la peinture. Bon nombre de collectionneurs achetaient des tableaux pour les enfermer dans des voûtes de banques. Les verrières m'ont permis de faire de l'art public.... Un jour, une femme m'a abordée dans la rue pour me parler de la station de métro Champ-de-Mars. « Qu'il fasse beau, qu'il pleuve ou qu'il neige, j'adore vos verrières du Champ-de-Mars. Ces grandes formes qui dansent me font chaud au coeur. » Cette femme n'étaient ni une collectionneuse ni une critique d'art, mais elle avait compris le sens que j'avais voulu donner à cette oeuvre.
L'esquisse d'une mémoire, 1996

Love, Art, Heart, Dance

“This used to be about sex. The literature of my people was pornography, filled with cries for mercy, drama enacted on people without prolonged negotiation, partners engaged in a dance in the middle of a bonfire. Now, it's 300-page manuals about how to make sure nothing bad will happen.”

Laura Antoniou (1963) American novelist

Source: "Unsafe at Any Speed or: Safe, Sane and Consensual, My Fanny", p. 13

People, Sex, Literature, Dance

“At Black Mountain College in 1952, I organized an event that involved the paintings of Bob Rauschenberg, the dancing of Merce Cunningham, films, slides, phonograph records, radios, the poetries of w:Charles Olson and M. C. Richards recited from the tops of ladders, and the pianism of David Tudor, together with my 'Juilliard lecture', which ends: 'A piece of string, a sunset, each acts.' The audience was seated in the center of all this activity. Later that summer, vacationing in New England, I visited America's first synagogue, to discover that the congregation was there seated precisely the way I had arranged the audience at Black Mountain.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Quote in: 'Silence: lectures and writings by John Cage'; publisher Middletown, Conn. Wesleyan University Press, June 1961, Foreword/ix
1960s

Way, Mountain, Dance, Summer

“One result of the nobility and gentry becoming more mobile and mixing more together was new kinds of parties. From the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century, whenever people decided to entertain, they did so in much the same way. They gave either a dinner on its own, or a dinner combined with dancing. The latter combination started with a meal, sometimes enlivened by music. After dinner the company retired to a withdrawing room, and passed an hour or so by taking tea or dessert, or playing cards, or listening to more music. They then returned to the room where they had dined, for dancing or as it tended to be called, a ball; in the early eighteenth century as few as seven couples dancing together could be described as a ball. After dancing there was normally some kind of light refreshment, and then everybody went home. The refreshments at the end might, according to the century, be described as a banquet or a supper, the room for dinner and dancing a great chamber or a saloon; the dances danced, the music played and the food eaten changed, but the pattern remained much the same. The guests did one thing at a time, and they all did it together.”

Mark Girouard (1931) British architectural historian

Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History (1978)

People, Food, Music, Way

“For me dancing is not just moving your arms and legs but basically it's a very spiritual experience. It's part of me and a second nature to me. You can say it is in my blood.”

Madhuri Dixit (1967) Indian actress

Quote, When personality comes first.....

Nature, Dance, Parting

“Muhammad bin Tughlaq became notorious for enslaving captives, and his reputation in this regard spread far and wide… Ibn Battuta’s eye-witness account of the Sultan’s arranging marriages of enslaved girls with Muslims on a large scale on the two Ids confirms the statement of Al Umri. “First of all,” writes he, “daughters of Kafir (Hindu) Rajas captured during the course of the year, come, sing and dance. Thereafter they are bestowed upon Amirs and important foreigners. After this the daughters of other Kafirs dance and sing… the Sultan gives them to his brothers, relatives sons of Maliks etc. On the sixth day male and female slaves are married.” It was a general practice for Hindu girls of good families to learn the art of dancing. It was a sort of religious rite. They used to dance during weddings, festivals and Pujas at home and in temples. This art was turned ravenous under their Muslim captors or buyers.”

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Masalik-ul-Absar, E and D, III, p. 580. Ibn Battuta, p. 63, Hindi version by S.A.A. Rizvi in Tughlaq Kalin Bharat, Part I, Aligarh, p. 189. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7

Marriage, Family, Art, Home

“[I was] a little boy with a patch over one eye, who sang and danced along the street. I had what’s called a lazy eye, so I had to wear the patch. You tend to be a prodded kind of kid when you look like that, but it makes you much stronger in the end.”

Holly Johnson (1960) British artist

Hooray For Hollywood http://www.zttaat.com/article.php?title=481 by Paul Simper at zttaat.com, Accessed May 2014.

Boy, Dance

“Coming and going by the dance, I see
That what I am not is a part of me.
Dancing is all that I can ever trust,
The dance is all I am, the rest is dust.
I will believe my bones and live by what
Will go on dancing when my bones are not.”

Sydney Carter (1915–2004) British musician and poet

Written as an epitaph based upon his lyrics to "Lord of the Dance".

Dance, Parting

“Dancing with the wind: the fire burns, the water drowns.”

Travis Meeks (1979) American musician

Dancing with the wind (Red - 2003).
Lyrics

Water, Dance

“When I speak of the erotic, then I speak of it as an assertion of the life force of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

entry for June 26 Living Life Fully in Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much, Anne Wilson Schaef, c. 1990

Love, Life, Women, History

“"Only men laugh, only men dance, only men weep" - Saying on Darkover, quoted by Lew Alton”

Marion Zimmer Bradley book Sharra's Exile

Sharra's Exile (1981)

Men, Quotes, Dance

“Let's face it: there are few things in this world more stupid than dancing. Except break dancing, which pirates and lumber jacks would agree is awesome. Other than that, dancing makes me envy cripples.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

The Best Page in the Universe

Stupidity, World, Dance, Envy

“How can you put out a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper? No dramatic art form should be dictated and controlled by men whose training and instincts are cut of an entirely different cloth. The fact remains that these gentlemen sell consumer goods, not an art form.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Rod Serling: Submitted for Your Approval (October 1997), American Masters (PBS: Thirteen/WNET).
Other

Men, Art, Dance, Training

“I've just finished reading Shakespeare's Sonnets, that is, I've read and understood them for the first time. One passionate, desolate lament - immeasurable and inconsolable - for the waning, wasting and passing of beauty. At the same time there's something disturbingly un-Christian here - the utterly heathen, desperate keening of the dirges, the grisly dances of death, danses macabres, in which death is nothing but the end, finality - destruction, not transition.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights p. 38 Diaries 1951

Death, Beauty, Passion, Time

“Teaching Latin to someone like me in high school was somewhat like trying to teach a pig to dance. It's a waste of the teacher's time and it irritates the pig.”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

Teaching the Pig to Dance

School, Teachers, Time, Dance

“You don't paint the way someone, by observing his life, thinks you have to paint, you paint the way you have to in order to give. That's life itself, and someone will look and say it is the product of knowing, but it has nothing to do with knowing, it has to do with giving. The question about knowing will naturally be wrong. When you've finished giving, the look surprises you as anyone else. Some painters talking about painting are like a lot of kids dancing at a prom. An hour later you are too shy to get out on the floor.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1950's, Evergreen Review, 1958

Life, Way, Question, Nature

“What is bigger than an elephant? But this also is become man's plaything, and a spectacle at public solemnities; and it learns to skip, dance, and kneel.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Of Fortune
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Learning, Dance

“Greatness is often born of the passionate dance between a rare talent and a noble purpose.”

Nicholas Lore (1944) American social scientist

The Pathfinder (1998)

Passion, Dance

“Barani mourned: “Should the king consider the payment of a few tankas by way of jiziya as sufficient justification for their allowing all possible freedom to the infidels to observe and demonstrate all orders and detail of infidelity, to read the misleading literature of their faith, and to propagate their teachings, how could the true religion get the upper hand over other religions, and how could the emblems of Islam be held high? How will the true faith prevail if rulers allow the infidels to keep their temples, adorn their idols, and to make merry during their festivals with beating of drums and dhols, singing and dancing?””

Ziauddin Barani (1285–1357) Indian Muslim historian and political thinker (1285–1357)

Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. ISBN 9788185990231

Faith, Religion, Way, Literature

“Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant King,
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,
Cuckoo, jug, jug, pu wee, to witta woo!”

Thomas Nashe (1567–1601) English Elizabethan pamphleteer and poet

Source: Summer's Last Will and Testament http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/summ1.htm (1600), lines 161-164.

Spring, Bird, Singing, Dance

“And you know what people, you ain’t gonna make a difference by buildin’ more bombs. And you ain’t gonna make a difference by puttin’ on more make-up and showin’ up on more television shows. And you’re not gonna make a difference by havin’ the loudest P. A., or the biggest crowd at your concerts. You’re gonna make a difference when you lay down your life, and in complete submission to God, choose to die with Him, in service, to other people…“For so many people that I know, Christianity is this matter of – it has everything to do with morals. ‘Christianity is a religion about morals.’ And they will even talk about Jesus, and they will say ‘Kids need to know about Jesus so that they – so that they won’t, uh – smoke, drink, or dance, or go with girls who do,’ and all that kind of thing, and I kinda go, ‘That’s not why people need to know about Jesus.’ The only reason – the only possible excuse for talking about Jesus is because—we need a Savior.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

The Lord's Prayer, Here in America CD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_in_America (February 1994) In Concert

Life, God, People, Religion

“When discussing Bach’s six Brandenburg concertos, the artistically aware person usually states, among other things, that when these masterpieces were composed, the stars were dancing in heavens. God and his dwelling place are always involved whenever these people talk about Bach.”

Elfriede Jelinek book The Piano Teacher

P159
The Piano Teacher (1988)

God, People, Star, Dance

“At its most basic, Mr. Astaire's technique has three elements - tap, ballet and ballroom dancing. The ballet training, by his account, was brief but came at a crucial, early age. He has sometimes been classed as a tap dancer, but he was never the hoofer he has jokingly called himself. Much of the choreographic outline of his dancing with his ladies—be it Miss Rogers or Miss Hayworth—is ballroom. But of course, no ballroom dancer could dance like this.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Dance critic Anna Kisselgoff, in Shepard, Richard F. "Fred Astaire, The Ultimate Dancer, Dies," The New York Times, 23 June 1987.

Age, Dance, Training

“…Upon this, Sher Shah turned again towards Kalinjar… The Raja of Kalinjar, Kirat Sing, did not come out to meet him. So he ordered the fort to be invested, and threw up mounds against it, and in a short time the mounds rose so high that they overtopped the fort. The men who were in the streets and houses were exposed, and the Afghans shot them with their arrows and muskets from off the mounds. The cause of this tedious mode of capturing the fort was this. Among the women of Raja Kirat Sing was a Patar slave-girl, that is a dancing-girl. The king had heard exceeding praise of her, and he considered how to get possession of her, for he feared lest if he stormed the fort, the Raja Kirat Sing would certainly make a jauhar, and would burn the girl…
“On Friday, the 9th of RabI’u-l awwal, 952 A. H., when one watch and two hours of the day was over, Sher Shah called for his breakfast, and ate with his ‘ulama and priests, without whom he never breakfasted. In the midst of breakfast, Shaikh NizAm said, ‘There is nothing equal to a religious war against the infidels. If you be slain you become a martyr, if you live you become a ghazi.’ When Sher Shah had finished eating his breakfast, he ordered Darya Khan to bring loaded shells, and went up to the top of a mound, and with his own hand shot off many arrows, and said, ‘Darya Khan comes not; he delays very long.’ But when they were at last brought, Sher Shah came down from the mound, and stood where they were placed. While the men were employed in discharging them, by the will of Allah Almighty, one shell full of gunpowder struck on the gate of the fort and broke, and came and fell where a great number of other shells were placed. Those which were loaded all began to explode. Shaikh Halil, Shaikh Nizam, and other learned men, and most of the others escaped and were not burnt, but they brought out Sher Shah partially burnt. A young princess who was standing by the rockets was burnt to death. When Sher Shah was carried into his tent, all his nobles assembled in darbAr; and he sent for ‘Isa Khan Hajib and Masnad Khan Kalkapur, the son-in-law of Isa Khan, and the paternal uncle of the author, to come into his tent, and ordered them to take the fort while he was yet alive. When ‘Isa Khan came out and told the chiefs that it was Sher Shah’s order that they should attack on every side and capture the fort, men came and swarmed out instantly on every side like ants and locusts; and by the time of afternoon prayers captured the fort, putting every one to the sword, and sending all the infidels to hell. About the hour of evening prayers, the intelligence of the victory reached Sher Shah, and marks of joy and pleasure appeared on his countenance. Raja Kirat Sing, with seventy men, remained in a house. Kutb Khan the whole night long watched the house in person lest the Raja should escape. Sher Shah said to his sons that none of his nobles need watch the house, so that the Raja escaped out of the house, and the labour and trouble of this long watching was lost. The next day at sunrise, however, they took the Raja alive…””

Sher Shah Suri (1486–1545) founder of Sur Empire in Northern India

Tarikh-i-Sher Shahi of Abbas Khan Sherwani in Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume IV, pp. 407-09. Quoted in S.R.Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition

Death, Women, Men, War

“The world doesn't live off jam and fancy perfumes - it lives off bread and meat and potatoes. Nothing changes. All the big fancy stuff is sloppy stuff that crashes. I don't need dancing baloney - I need stuff that works. That's not as pretty, and just as hard.”

Theo de Raadt (1968) systems software engineer

Six-monthly releases: OpenBSD shows the way, Varghese, Sam, 2009-12-08, iTWire, 2016-02-16 http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/29872-six-monthly-releases-openbsd-shows-the-way/29872-six-monthly-releases-openbsd-shows-the-way?start=1,

World, Change, Dance

“We've traveled halfway 'round the world
To find ourselves again
September morn
We danced until the night became a brand new day
Two lovers playing scenes from some romantic play
September morning still can make me feel that way”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

September Morn, co-written with Gilbert Bécaud
Song lyrics, September Morn (1979)

World, Way, Travel, Feeling

“Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain.
I feel summer creepin' in and I'm tired of this town again.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Mary Jane's Last Dance
Lyrics, Greatest Hits (1993)

Pain, Feeling, Time, Dance

““But this would be such a fine match, don’t you think?” Mrs. Ellsworth insisted.
“He dances well, but more than that I am not willing to say without any acquaintance with his character.””

Mary Robinette Kowal (1969) American writer and puppeteer

Source: Shades of Milk and Honey (2010), Chapter 3 (p. 42)

Thinking, Dance

“I met him Cummingham around 1953 after a performance I saw. He was teaching and making dances for his company and was already working with John Cage. What interested me initially wasn't just the movement but also the music he worked with, which was unfamiliar to me... Later Bob Rauschenberg had been doing sets and costumes for the Cunningham Company... I can't say exactly how, but for a period of time, Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg, and I saw each other frequently and exchanged ideas. John [Cage] was very interested in presenting his ideas to other people, so it was impossible to be around and not to learn... He could apply his ideas on space and time to painting, or music or architecture... I don't have a clear sense of cause and effect in my painting, but it is probably there.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Jasper Johns, by Bryan Robertson and Tim Marlow, Tate, in 'The Art Magazine', London, Winter 1993, pp. 40, 47
1990s

People, Music, Idea, Sense

“I warrant you, if he danced till doomsday, he thought I was to pay the piper.”

William Congreve Love for Love

Act II, scene ii
Love for Love (1695)

Dance

“His hand came nearer, his eyes danced round the room, which began to fill with a golden haze. He beckoned, and Clesant moved into his arms. Clesand had often been proud of his disease but never, never of his body, it had never occurred to him that he could provoke desire. This sudden revelation shattered him, he fell from his pedestal, but not alone, there was someone to cling to, broad shoulders, a sunburnt throat, lips that parted as they touched him to murmur – ‘And to hell with Woolacott’.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Dr Woolacott
The Life to Come and other stories (1972)

Disease, Hell, Dance, Parting

“A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;
I drink alone, for no friend is near.
Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,
For he, with my shadow, will make three men.
The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;
Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.
Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave
I must make merry before the Spring is spent.
To the songs I sing the moon flickers her beams;
In the dance I weave my shadow tangles and breaks.
While we were sober, three shared the fun;
Now we are drunk, each goes his way.
May we long share our odd, inanimate feast,
And meet at last on the Cloudy River of the sky.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"Drinking Alone by Moonlight" (月下獨酌), one of Li Bai's best-known poems, as translated by Arthur Waley in More Translations From the Chinese (1919)
Variant translation:
From a pot of wine among the flowers
I drank alone. There was no one with me—
Till, raising my cup, I asked the bright moon
To bring me my shadow and make us three.
Alas, the moon was unable to drink
And my shadow tagged me vacantly;
But still for a while I had these friends
To cheer me through the end of spring...
I sang. The moon encouraged me.
I danced. My shadow tumbled after.
As long as I knew, we were boon companions.
And then I was drunk, and we lost one another.
...Shall goodwill ever be secure?
I watch the long road of the River of Stars.
"Drinking Alone with the Moon" (trans. Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu)

Men, Way, Spring, Flowers

“My room overlooks the park and yesterday during the afternoon I'd opened up all the blinds and taken back the curtains so I could look out over the park. Come nightfall, I was grooving to some rap record in my room, bopping around the room for maybe half an hour. I don't know what I was doing, just messing around…and at one stage I looked out of the window and there were about 200 people looking up, clapping, applauding my dancing. That was funny.”

The Edge (1961) Irish rock musician, guitar player of U2

On dancing

People, Dance

“I had established an enviable scheme of life. I refused to dance attendance in the ante-chambers of the great. If anyone wanted something from me he had to ask. I was much run after, but if the person was not of rank, or a friend, I worked [painted] for nobody.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

letter to his friend Don Martín Zapater, c. 1789; from: Francisco Zapater y Gomez : Goya; Noticias biograficas, Zaragoza, 1868, La Perse Verencia; as quoted in Francisco Goya, Hugh Stokes, Herbert Jenkins Limited Publishers, London, 1914, p. 182
1780s

Life, Dance, Painting, Personality

“But this, this which we say before we’re sorry,
This which we live behind our unseen faces,
Is neither dream, nor childhood, neither
Myth, nor landscape, final, nor finished,
For we are incomplete and know no future,
And we are howling or dancing out our souls
In beating syllables before the curtain:
We are Shakespearean, we are strangers.”

Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966) American poet

"Dogs Are Shakespearean, Children Are Strangers" http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/print.html?id=171346 Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge (1959)

Dreams, Soul, Future, Dance

“Music is a world within itself
With a language we all understand,
With an equal opportunity
For all to sing, dance and clap their hands.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Sir Duke
Song lyrics, Songs In The Key of Life (1976)

World, Music, Understanding, Singing

“In those days, dances were dances and songs were songs. Film dances always had a semi-classical or folk element to them and songs were all about soul-stirring lyrics and haunting music. These days, they are more about technique and technology, often it's the camera that's dancing, the synthesiser that's singing. Not my cup of tea.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

Vyjayanthimala still cuts a striking figure tall

Music, Soul, Singing, Dance

“The famous palaeolithic paintings found in caves such as that at Lascaux in the Dordogne have been interpreted as evidence that, at least implicitly people were operating 20,000 or more years ago with teleological intent in terms of past, present, and future. It may well be that those responsible for the so-called 'Dancing Sorcerer' …may have felt that the actual performance of the dance was insufficient, since they were concerned with the magical efficacy of the dance after it ended.”

Gerald James Whitrow (1912–2000) British mathematician

Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day (1988)

People, Past, Future, Dance

“I am ice and dust. I am sky.
I can see horses wading through snowdrifts.
My broken hearts, my fabulous dances.
My fleeting song, fleeting.
The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, 50 Words for Snow (2011)

World, Heart, Horse, Dance

“But when you think: Tim McGraw,
I hope you think my favorite song.
The one we danced to all night long:
The moon like a spotlight on the lake.
When you think happiness,
I hope you think: "That little black dress."
Think of my head on your chest,
An' my old faded blue jeans.
When you think Tim McGraw,
I hope you think of me.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Tim McGraw, written by Taylor Swift and Liz Rose
Song lyrics, Taylor Swift (2006)

Happiness, Hope, Thinking, Dance

“Dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.”

Charles Baudelaire book La Fanfarlo

La danse peut révéler tout ce que la musique recèle de mystérieux, et elle a de plus le mérite d'être humaine et palpable. La danse, c'est la poésie avec des bras et des jambs, ... "La Fanfarlo" (1847) http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Fanfarlo

Music, Dance

“willow of crystal, a poplar of water,
a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over,
tree that is firmly rooted and that dances,
turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever:
the calm course of a star
or the spring, appearing without urgency,
water behind a stillness of closed eyelids
flowing all night and pouring out prophecies,
a single presence in the procession of waves
wave over wave until all is overlapped,
in a green sovereignty without decline
a bright hallucination of many wings
when they all open at the height of the sky, course of a journey among the densities
of the days of the future and the fateful
brilliance of misery shining like a bird
that petrifies the forest with its singing
and the annunciations of happiness
among the branches which go disappearing,
hours of light even now pecked away by the birds,
omens which even now fly out of my hand, an actual presence like a burst of singing,
like the song of the wind in a burning building,
a long look holding the whole world suspended,
the world with all its seas and all its mountains,
body of light as it is filtered through agate,
the thighs of light, the belly of light, the bays,
the solar rock and the cloud-colored body,
color of day that goes racing and leaping,
the hour glitters and assumes its body,
now the world stands, visible through your body,
and is transparent through your transparency”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Sun Stone (1957)

Fate, Happiness, World, Color

“I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Cloud

St. 1
The Cloud (1820)

Dreams, Flowers, Light, Sun

“Her feet beneath her petticoat
Like little mice stole in and out,
As if they feared the light;
But oh, she dances such a way!
No sun upon an Easter-day
Is half so fine a sight.”

John Suckling (1609–1642) English poet

Ballad upon a Wedding. Compare: "Her pretty feet, like snails, did creep A little out, and then, As if they played at bo-peep, Did soon draw in again", Robert Herrick, To Mistress Susanna Southwell.
Other poems

Fear, Way, Light, Sun

“I am not speaking, obviously, to the laughing hyenas who enjoy seeing images of the wreckage and snicker good–it–serves–the–Americans–right. I am speaking to those who, though not stupid or evil, are wallowing in prudence and doubt. And to them I say: "Wake up, people. Wake up!!" Intimidated as you are by your fear of going against the current—that is, appearing racist (a word which is entirely inapt as we are speaking not about a race but about a religion)—you don’t understand or don’t want to understand that a reverse–Crusade is in progress. Accustomed as you are to the double–cross, blinded as you are by myopia, you don’t understand or don’t want to understand that a war of religion is in progress. Desired and declared by a fringe of that religion, perhaps, but a war of religion nonetheless. A war which they call Jihad. Holy War. A war that might not seek to conquer our territory, but that certainly seeks to conquer our souls. That seeks the disappearance of our freedom and our civilization. That seeks to annihilate our way of living and dying, our way of praying or not praying, our way of eating and drinking and dressing and entertaining and informing ourselves. You don’t understand or don’t want to understand that if we don’t oppose them, if we don’t defend ourselves, if we don’t fight, the Jihad will win. And it will destroy the world that for better or worse we’ve managed to build, to change, to improve, to render a little more intelligent, that is to say, less bigoted—or even not bigoted at all. And with that it will destroy our culture, our art, our science, our morals, our values, our pleasures… Christ! Don’t you realize that the Osama Bin Ladens feel authorized to kill you and your children because you drink wine or beer, because you don’t wear your beard long or a chador, because you go to the theater or the movies, because you listen to music and sing pop songs, because you dance in discos or at home, because you watch TV, wear miniskirts or short–shorts, because you go naked or half naked to the beach or the pool, because you *** when you want and where you want and who you want? Don’t you even care about that, you fools? I am an atheist, thank God. And I have no intention of letting myself be killed for it.”

Oriana Fallaci book The Rage and the Pride

"Rage and the Pride">Oriana Fallaci - The Rage and the Pride http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rage-Pride-Oriana-Fallaci/dp/084782599X - Universe Publishing; Intl edition, 2002, ISBN 9780847825998

God, War, Children, People

“Everybody wants to know about it. Even now. But look at what else I have accomplished since then which must have taken courage. Far more than what it took to streak. But because it's more immediate you think you could even do this. But you can't build a dance institute out of barren land.”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

On her steaking and the Nritygarma, the dance institute she established in Bangalore quoted in I have been a hippie all my life, 22 August 1998, 14 january 2014, Rediff.com http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/aug/22bedi.htm,

Courage, Thinking, Dance

“That's because I simply carried on dancing, [she said]. It was my first love, and thanks to my taskmaster of a grandmother (Yadugiri Devi), I had never stopped my Bharata Natyam.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

Vyjayanthimala still cuts a striking figure tall

Love, Dance

“"I'm not sure if Irish people can dance…. except for The Edge, that is, who is our own funky chicken." (Bono on Edge's dancing)”

The Edge (1961) Irish rock musician, guitar player of U2

On dancing

People, Dance

“On a burning bridge, your options are minimal at best Depending on where you're standing And how much breath is in your chest If it came down to it Would you high-tail home and hide? Or dance on fire and enjoy the ride?”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Light Grenades (2006)

Home, Dance, Dependency

“Can't act, slightly bald, also dances.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Fred Astaire's version of the lost infamous screen test report in his interview on 20/20 with Barbara Walters, ABC, 1980 and reaffirmed by Astaire in Thomas, Bob. Astaire, the Man, The Dancer. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1985. ISBN 0297784021 , p. 78.

Dance

“On my Fleischmann Hour from Rochester I went into a "rave" about the Victor record of ["It Must Be True"] as played by Gus Arnheim and his Cocoanut Grove Orchestra. From all reports that drift back to me, and from people that I know in California, Arnheim has the finest dance aggregation on the West Coast, and to my way of thinking, perhaps the finest in the entire world. It may sound like a rather broad statement, but I would be willing to back his organization against any other in any other part of the world. Although I have never seen them perform on the stage to what they have in the way of showmanship, from a pure musical standpoint I feel that they are unexcelled.
Perhaps my great admiration for them is increased by the presence of Bing Crosby, formerly the lead in Paul Whiteman's "Rhythm Boys", who, in my humble opinion, has the finest recording voice to which it has ever been my pleasure to listen. If he doesn't capture all the feminine hearts in America through his records, no one ever will. He has the most unique style of singing I have ever listened to since I used to enjoy the records of Charlie Kaley.”

Rudy Vallée (1901–1986) American singer, actor, bandleader, and entertainer

"Tuneful Topics", Radio Digest, June 1931. https://archive.org/stream/radiodigest2627unse#page/n869/mode/2up

People, Pleasure, World, Music

“Way down South they gave a jubilee
Them Georgia folks they had a jamboree
They’re drinking home brew from a wooden cup
The folks dancing there got all shook up.”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Rock and Roll Music" (1957)
Song lyrics

Way, Home, Drink, Dance

“Art has not the celestial and universal value that people like to attribute to it. Life is far more interesting. Dada knows the correct measure that should be given to art: with subtle, perfidious methods, Dada introduces it into daily life. And vice versa. In art, Dada reduces everything to an initial simplicity, growing always more relative. It mingles its caprices with the chaotic wind of creation and the barbaric dances of savage tribes. It wants logic reduced to a personal minimum.”

Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist

1920s, Lecture on Dada', 1922

Life, People, Art, Universe

“What's the matter with the crowd I'm seeing?
"Don't you know that their out of touch?"
Should I try to be a straight 'A' student?
"If you are then you think too much.
Don't you know about the new fashion honey?
All you need are looks and a whole lotta money."
It's the next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways
It's still rock and roll to me.
Everybody's talkin' 'bout the new sound
Funny, but it's still rock and roll to me.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

It's Still Rock and Roll to Me.
Song lyrics, Glass Houses (1980)

Money, Fashion, Thinking, Dance

“They climb the clouds/ To come through with airmail/ The dancing crowds/ Look up to some rare male/ Like that Astaire male.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

from Lorenz Hart's title number to On Your Toes.

Dance

“And you can spit-shine your shoes Pittsburgh, you're going dancing with the Lord of Lords, Lord Stanley!”

Mike Lange (1948) Canadian sportscaster

"Eddie Spaghetti! The Story Behind Mike Lange-isms"

Shoe, Dance

“Me? I play Gene Kelly…It's a guy who produces, directs, sings, and dances. who else could it be but Kelly?”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Fred Astaire on his role in Silk Stockings in Smith, Cecil. "Astaire prefers the 'Good Old Days' of the present." Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1957, sec. 5, p. 3. (M).

Guy, Singing, Dance

“I produce a form, an impression of light, a beauty of tones... The etchings are now full of life, an ecstasy, a dance, a gentle motion and fluctuation in tones.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

1900 - 1920

Life, Beauty, Light, Dance

“O Soul come back to watch the birds in flight!
He who has found such manifold delights
Shall feel his cheeks aglow
And the blood-spirit dancing through his limbs.”

Qu Yuan (-343–-278 BC) ancient Chinese poet

Source: "The Great Summons" (trans. Arthur Waley), Lines 144–147

Feeling, Soul, Bird, Dance

“And Music is an art which likes people to laugh and sing and dance. It cares nothing for melancholy, nor for a man who sorrows over what is of no importance, but ignores, instead, such folk. It brings joy everywhere it's present; it comforts the disconsolate, and just hearing it makes people rejoice.”

Guillaume de Machaut (1300–1377) French poet and composer

Et musique est une science
Qui veut qu'on rie et chante et dance.
Cure n'a de merencolie,
Ne d'homme qui merencolie
A chose qui ne puet valoir,
Eins met tels gens en nonchaloir.
Partout ou elle est joie y porte;
Les desconfortez reconforte,
Et nes seulement de l'oir
Fait elle les gens resjoir.
"Le Prologue", line 85; translation from Ross W. Duffin (ed.) A Performer's Guide to Medieval Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000) p. 190.

People, Art, Music, Singing

“The stones were dancing now. O yes, they were dancing! But it was not hopping and skipping like jigs or reels, nor was it the dismal revolving of a ballroom. Not a stone moved from its place, but they rocked and turned, slowly and with the greatest dignity, as if to say: "We are the lords of the earth and of the water. We shall stand when all has gone. We shall endure until better things come. But what can be better than we? So we shall endure forever."”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Harper of the Stones (1986).

Water, Dance

“But Adrian did not hear him. I have mentioned that during dinner, preoccupied with his thoughts, he had bolted his food. Nature now took its toll. An acute spasm suddenly ran though him, and with a brief 'Ouch!' of pain he doubled up and began to walk round in circles. Sir Jasper clicked his tongue impatiently. "This is no time for doing the Astaire pom-pom dance," he said sharply.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

From P.G. Wodehouse's Mulliner Nights (1933).

Pain, Food, Nature, Time

“They fear others—that is why they sought positions of power. Their greatest dream is to have a King who dances when they move the threads: and for Massenet, to marry his child to the heir of Entonne, and sit his grandson upon the throne. The ordinary desires of those who rise to such positions. In their appetites, they are not men of great originality. Though they will do enormous harm in spite of that.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: Sea Without a Shore (1996), Chapter 37 (p. 526)

Men, Fear, Dreams, Dance

“The earth is round, so why to play it square? Beneath the sun and beneath the moon, in the clouds that sail gently by, everything is going round. Children dance in a ring; there is the Tour de France, and the bikes, and the eyes that look at them and frame them on the road… You leave your rectangles, your geometrical windows, and you go to the land of circles in action…. It's human nature to break through boundaries, to grow, to push towards freedom. Roundness is free; it has no beginning and no end.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

referring to the circus ring
Quote, 1950's, from: Fernand Léger - The Later Years, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota, published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, p. 41
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1950's

Children, Nature, Freedom, Sun

“What is happening here?
Something is going on
That's not quite clear.
Somebody turn on the light,
We're gonna have a party.
It's starting tonight.

Oh, what a feeling!
When we're dancing on the ceiling.”

Lionel Richie (1949) American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer and actor

Dancing on the Ceiling, co-written with Mike Frenchik and Carlos Rios.
Song lyrics, Dancing on the Ceiling (1986)

Feeling, Light, Dance

“And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the checkered shade.
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 94

Youth, Holiday, Dance

“The contrast between Tolstoy’s discretion and Dostoevsky’s exhibitionism, between the restraint of the one and the ‘dancing about naked in public’ of the other—as someone says in The Possessed—is attributable to the same social gap as separated Voltaire from Rousseau.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

' Chapter 1. Naturalism and Impressionism
The Social History of Art, Volume IV. Naturalism, impressionism, the film age, 1999

Dance

“The major difference between Astaire and Kelly is a difference, not of talent or technique, but of levels of sophistication. On the face of it, Kelly looks the more sophisticated. Where Kelly has ideas, Astaire has dance steps. Where Kelly has smartly tailored, dramatically apt Comden and Green scripts, Astaire in the Thirties made do with formulas derived from nineteenth-century French Farce. But the Kelly film is no longer a dance film. It's a story film with dances, as distinguished from a dance film with a story. When Fred and Ginger go into their dance, you see it as a distinct formal entity, even if it's been elaborately built up to in the script. In a Kelly film, the plot action and the musical set pieces preserve a smooth community of high spirits, so that the pressure in a dance number will often seem too low, the dance itself plebeian or folksy in order to "match up" with the rest of the picture.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Arlene Croce, in Croce, Arlene. The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, W.H. Allen, London, 1974. p. 7. ISBN 0491001592.

Music, Communication, Idea, Dance

“He is terribly rare. He is like Bach, who in his time had a great concentration of ability, essence, knowledge, a spread of music. Astaire has that same concentration of genius; there is so much of the dance in him that it has been distilled.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

George Balanchine in Nabokov, Ivan and Carmichael, Elizabeth. "Balanchine, An Interview". Horizon, January 1961, pp. 44-56. (M).

Music, Knowledge, Time, Dance

“Ultimately modelling, acting or dancing is a form of an art. There might be different ways to express these various arts but the basics are always same. We have only nine emotions all over the world and expressing those emotions in any form is going to be similar in one or the other way. there is a rhythm in everything. In modelling we hold the expressions or try to express with no emotions on face but with pride and attitude in acting we go with the flow of the emotions and in dance, we express through our face and body both in rhythm. So this rhythm and emotions are part of your expressions.”

Nikita Gokhale (1990) Indian Actress, Indian Model

"‘Interview with Nikita Gohkale’" https://vasfotios.wixsite.com/citylights/single-post/2017/12/12/Interview-with-Nikita-Gohkale. City Lights. December 12, 2017.

World, Art, Way, Dance

“Consider an opening musical number set in a maternity ward, where Tommy Pickles and his friends Chuckie Finster and Phil and Lil DeVille are hoping for a look at Tommy's new kid brother, Dilbert. (Dil Pickles — get it? For Rugrats fans, this is humor of the highest order.) They wake up the babies, who do a number that seems inspired by Bubsy Berkeley, except that the Berkeley girls never had to supply their own dancing waters, if you get my drift.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-rugrats-movie-1998 of The Rugrats Movie (20 November 1998) Reviews, Two star reviews

Hope, Music, Girl, Water

“Here am I, the often sat on
Dancing don; my name is T-TT-N;
Like old wine in a new bottle
Is my talk on Aristotle.”

Henry Charles Beeching (1859–1919) English clergyman, author and poet

The Masque of Balliol http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2735.html (1880)

Wine, Dance

“There is a definite limit to the length of time a composer can go on writing in one dance rhythm (this limit is obviously reached by Ravel towards the end of La Valse and towards the beginning of Bolero).”

Constant Lambert (1905–1951) British composer and conductor

"Exoticism and Low Life", p. 174.
Music, Ho! (1934)

Time, Dance

“Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field.”

Yann Martel (1963) Canadian author best known for the book Life of Pi

Source: Beatrice & Virgil (2010), p. 114

Understanding, Dance

“The author's conviction on this day of the New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.”

Ezra Pound book ABC of Reading

Preface
ABC of Reading (1934)

Music, Dance

“A very merry, dancing, drinking,
Laughing, quaffing, and unthinkable time.”

John Dryden book Fables, Ancient and Modern

Source: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), The Secular Masque (1700), Lines 38–39.

Drink, Time, Dance

“That was all he ever really wanted from women; a smile, a dance, a kiss, and to be remembered fondly.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Matrim Cauthon
(15 October 1993)

Women, Smile, Kiss, Dance

“I can see lights in the distance
Trembling in the dark cloak of night
Candles and lanterns are dancing, dancing
A waltz on All Souls Night.”

Loreena McKennitt (1957) Canadian musician and composer

The Visit (1991), All Souls Night

Soul, Light, Dance, Night

“Music bypasses the intellect, it makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you want to dance, makes you want to have sex.”

Siobhan Fahey (1958) singer and songwriter in Banarama and Shakespears Sister

G3 interview (2002)

Music, Sex, Dance, Cry

“I remember when I was doing a film with Fred Astaire, it was nothing for him to work three or four days on two bars of music. One evening in the dark grey hours of dusk, I was walking across the deserted MGM lot when a small, weary figure with a towel around his neck suddenly appeared out of the giant cube sound stages. It was Fred. He came over to me, threw a heavy arm around my shoulder and said: "Oh Alan, why doesn't someone tell me I cannot dance?" The tormented illogic of his question made any answer insipid, and all I could do was walk with him in silence.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Alan Jay Lerner in Lerner, Alan Jay. On the Street Where I Live. New York: Norton, 1978. p. 89. (M).

Music, Question, Silence, Appearance

“I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind — my wayward heart creates its own misery — Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child — long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it.”

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) British writer and philosopher

Undated letter to Joseph Johnson (October? 1792), published in The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft (2004), edited by Janet Todd, p. 206.

Idea, Silence, Suffering, Heart

“But when an old man dances,
His locks with age are grey.
But he's a child in mind.”

Anacreon (-570–-485 BC) Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns

Odes, XXXIX. (XXXVII), 3.

Age, Dance

“Solo dance was complete by one. Now because everybody is bored, feeling bored by one dancer only they are taking 10,20 people.”

Birju Maharaj (1938) Indian dancer

About the trend in Bollywood films which he felt was to keep the interest of the public though group choreography in "Movement in Stills: The Dance and Life of Kumudini Lakhia", page=178

People, Feeling, Dance

““Going to dance at my wake?”
“I don’t dance,” the lawyer answered, “but you tempt me to learn.””

Robert A. Heinlein book I Will Fear No Evil

Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 1, p. 13

Learning, Dance

“When it comes to the Middle East, Trump again has the advantage of being an unknown quantity. Although he has talked a lot of nonsense about foreign policy, he has also insisted on a valid point: the current US policy simply doesn’t work. That, in turn, might persuade him to look for something different, creating at least an opportunity for repairing some of the damage done by Obama’s wayward policies to peace and stability in the Middle East. Clinton, in contrast, already has a record. She backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt before Obama decided to ditch them. She was co-pilot in Obama’s disastrous policy in Libya. On the perennial Arab-Israeli conflict, she did the hoola dance choreographed by Obama, going round and round and getting nowhere. Clinton was also in the driving seat when the US launched secret talks in Oman with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a textbook example of diplomatic chicanery that led to the great swindle known as “the Iran Nuclear deal.””

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: Clinton or Trump – Better or Less Bad? http://english.aawsat.com/2016/11/article55361471/opinion-clinton-trump-better-less-bad, Ashraq Al-Awsat (November 4, 2016)

Secret, Peace, Dance

Quotes about dancing page 10

Quotes about dancing
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