THE QUOTABLE DANCER
1300 Humorous Dance Quotes
from Stage, Screen and Life in General
1300 Humorous Dance Quotes
from Stage, Screen and Life in General
This eBook contains 1300 humorous dance quotes from stage
& big screen, as well as an extensive A-Z of general dance topics
and an all-embracing card of dance styles from Classical Ballet to
Street Dance ...
"Mixing Ballet and Breakdance is like mixing apples and space-ships."
Touré in USA Today (2001)
The book also contains the fun things said by and about famous dancers
such as: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Busby Berkeley, Martha Graham,
Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Bob Fosse, Nijinsky, John Travolta, Patrick
Swayze, Michael Jackson, Michael Flatley, Savion Glover, even Mumbles
the Penguin & Wall-E.
"Michael Jackson's dance moves were
angular and twitchy, hinting at digital stops and starts rather than
analog fluidity - except, of course, for his famous Moonwalk, the image
of someone striding gracefully without ever leaving center stage."
Jon Pareles in The New York Times (2009)
With dance being a global phenomenon, this book reflects the
cosmopolitan appeal of the terpsichorean art. With entries from all over
the world and from down the centuries, this book still retains a firm
focus on and the idealogical identity of North American dance.
"The Soft-Shoe Shuffle, the wistful Tom
Sawyerish scuffing of the stage boards that says Americans experience
an isolating loneliness as if by the provenance of birth."
T.E. Kalem in Time magazine (1975)
A selection of quotations from The Quotable Dancer
DANCE in GENERAL
"Stifling an urge to dance is bad for your health - it rusts your spirit and your hips."
Adabella Radici
"Dancing is beautiful and sexy, unless it's at an open-bar wedding reception."
Ross Werland in The Chicago Tribune (2009)
"Bad dancing is more fun to watch than bad singing is to listen to."
Dana Stevens on Slate.com (2005)
"Choreography is like moisture in the mouth of an orator."
David Lichine
"A lot of people insisted on a wall between Modern Dance and Ballet. I'm beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things."
Twyla Tharp
"My love of my life is dancing, things like Tap, Modern, Ballet and Jazz. Also I love singing, even though my voice sounds awful, and watching me dance is like watching an elephant, so no-one does!"
Princess Diana, Letter to her nanny Mary Clarke (1978)
"I'm not an egomaniac like a lot of people say. But I am the world's best dancer, that's for sure."
Michael Flatley
DANCERS
FRED ASTAIRE & RITA HAYWORTH
"Fred Astaire's two films with Rita Hayworth are more than enough to make you forget Ginger Roger's ... Hayworth packs a shimmy that would knock Ginger back to the flatlands."
Dave Kehr in The Chicago Reader
JONATHAN BURROWS & MATTEO FARGION
Speaking Dance [2006] - "Burrows & Fargion belong simultaneously in Victorian music-hall and a cognitive research science lab."
Ismene Brown in The Daily Telegraph (2006)
CYD CHARISSE
"Her persona was smoky, sinuous, and cool: a quintessential 50s mix of sex and poise. She was the choreographic equivalent of a classic Sinatra LP."
Ty Burr in The Boston Globe (2008)
SAVION GLOVER
"When I go see him, if he knows 'Im there, he'll do some of my steps. The only thing is, he'll throw it in, but he'll throw it in at, like, Mach 2."
Gregory Hines
MICHAEL HUISMAN
Margot {2009} - "Nureyev (played by Huisman) handsome as a Beatle, taut-haunched as a stag, and sailing across the stage like the first arrow in a castle siege."
Caitlin Moran in The Times (2009)
MICHAEL JACKSON
"At some point in the early 1980s, Michael Jackson realized he could Moonwalk It's a great stunt. Jackson liked it so much, he turned it into a lifestyle."
Giles Smith in The Independent (1992)
GENE KELLY
An American In Paris (1951) - "Astounding footwork and choreography from Gene Kelly, who makes Justin Timberlake look positively arthritic by comparison."
Empire magazine (2003)
MADONNA
Vogue <1990> - "A dance-floor training manual on looking good."
Stephen Holden in The New York Times (1990)
MARIINSKY BALLET
"The Mariinsky is not just a company. It's a saga about a dynasty whose bloodline is that of Ballet itself. Think of it as a sweeping Russian epic following the fortunes of an artistic, aristocratic family that is always, always aware of its breeding."
Sanjoy Roy in The Guardian (2008)
NEW YORK CITY BALLET
"Always succinct in his suggestions, Balanchine once told a dancer, 'Reach for it like you're reaching for a Cadillac.' They just don't reach for those Cadillacs at N.Y.C.B. anymore. It's SUV City Ballet now."
Toni Bentley in The New York Review Of Books (2005)
RUDOLF NUREYEV
"Surveying choreographers, he said: 'Go and choose brain.' Like Hannibal Lecter, he sawed open the skull and feasted on the cerebrum."
Peter Conrad in The Observer (2007)
THE RADIO CITY ROCKETTES
"Nothing says Great Depression like the tap-tap-tap of dancing shoes and a long, spangled kick line."
Alessandra Stanley in The New York Times (2007)
MOIRA SHEARER
The Red Shoes (1948) - "She inspired more girls to dream of Ballerinadom than any since Pavlova ... She danced, with charm and almost infinite promise. She crossed the dance sky like a comet - never to be forgotten."
Clive Barnes in Dance magazine (2006)
JOHN TRAVOLTA
Saturday Night Fever (1977) - "Travolta jaywalked across the disco floor with the hormonal dazzle of a porno polyester peacock."
Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly (2000)
DANCE on FILM
CENTER STAGE (2000)
"This adolescent, awkwardly acted backstage romance wouldn't seem to call for heavy lifters, yet Susan Stroman, a two-time Tony winner, provided choreography with Christopher Wheeldon, of the N.Y. City Ballet. Why didn't they just hire Debbie Allen?"
Rita Kempley in The Washington Post (2000)
FLASHDANCE (1983)
"A seemingly impossible combination of a feminist Rocky, a bar girl Fame and Jane Fonda's Workout ... the plotting in Flashdance is as loose as the dancing."
Jay Cocks in Time magazine (1983)
SAVE THE LAST DANCE 2 (2006)
"Turns out it wasn't quite the last dance last time."
Christopher Null on FilmCritic.com (2006)
SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952)
"The choreography and dancing in this film are unforgettable ... The dance numbers in this film make you want to run out and buy a pair of Tap shoes."
Cheryl Northcutt on ApolloGuide.com
DANCE on STAGE
LA CAGE AUX FOLLES
"Jerry Mitchell has picked Cagelles dancers who are also acrobats, and, sure enough, the high kicks are heaven-storming and the cartwheels could loft a helicopter."
John Simon in New York magazine (2004)
CHICAGO
"Welcome back to Chicago, where the gin's cold, the piano's hot, the dancing's even hotter ... and all that jazz."
Octavio Roca in The San Francisco Chronicle (2003)
42nd STREET
"42nd Street is the Gospel According to Tap Dance."
Skip Sheffield in The Boca Raton News (1985)
MORE DANCE QUOTATIONS
"The smile is the dance of the face, and the dance is the smile of the limbs."
F. Leslie Clendenen
"The dancer's body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul."
Isadora Duncan
"Stifling an urge to dance is bad for your health - it rusts your spirit and your hips."
Adabella Radici
"As a rule of thumb if you can walk the dog in it, it has no place on the dance stage."
Louise Levene
"Dancing is like bank robbery; it takes split second timing."
Twyla Tharp
"When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. Its to enjoy each step along the way."
Wayne Dyer
"Dancing is such a despised and dishonored trade that if you tell a lawyer you do choreography he'll look at you as if you were a hummingbird."
Agnes de Mille in Life magazine (1963)
"No, I can't explain the dance to you; if I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it."
Isadora Duncan
"As a tadpole I always wanted to be a dancer. But you know what they say, the first thing to go on a frog are his legs."
Kermit the Frog on The Muppet Show (1976)
"You are never more alive than the first time someone puts a gun to your favorite head and asks you to dance."
Major Korgo Korgar on Andromeda: Cui Bono (2002)
"Tap dancing has just that contradictory posture: Buster Keaton from the waist up, Jim Carrey from the waist down."
Richard Corliss in Time magazine (2002)
"The Tango is a little unsubtle - in fact, if you met it at a dance class it would be stomping heavily on your feet in a pair of hobnailed boots."
Victoria Segal in The New Statesman (2007)
"It's not a dance. Even if you had no feet, you could still do the Macarena."
Michael Terrace
RICHARD GERE
Chicago (2002) - "Even lawyers can Tap-dance. Richard Gere's own Tap dancing is on the level of the Chicago Bar Associations annual revue."
Roger Ebert in The Chicago Sun-Times (2002)
PATRICK SWAYZE
Dirty Dancing (1987) - "Swayze is a watchable bundle of tempting testosterone."
Katharine Dieckmann in The Village Voice (1987)
MICHAEL FLATLEY
Lord of the Dance (1996) - "This extravaganza of Vegas Celticism has been playing to houses as packed as Michael Flatley's dancing trousers."
Matthew Sweet in The Independent (1996)
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