Quotes from Dancers

15 Points Per Correct Answer - No time limit  

1. 'I am a dancer. I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.' Martha Graham Mark Morris Merideth Monk Trisha Brown

2. 'When you have discovered that inner self, you can call yourself a dancer, but don't get snooty about it. Dancers don't live in ivory towers. If you put that inner man on a scale, it wouldn't weigh more than a hundredth of an ounce. The more you know, the humbler you become, if you really know it. This is growing, studying, living. Dance is life. Know that you are alive.' Alvin Ailey Anna Sokolow Sean Curran Hanya Holm

3. 'We don't have anything against being upside down or off vertically.' Pat Graney Moses Pendelton Arnie Zane Ted Shawn

4. 'I see America dancing, standing with one foot poised on the highest point of the Rockies, her two hands stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, her fine head tossed to the sky, her forehead shining with a Crown of a million stars.' Eliot Feld Twyla Tharp Isadora Duncan Bill T. Jones

5. 'you have to love dancing to stick to it. it gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive. it is not for unsteady souls.' (sic.) Merce Cunningham Douglas Dunn Alwin Nikolais Helen Tamiris

6. 'The dance is all things to all men.' Jose Limon Charles Weidman Martha Graham Ruth St. Denis

7. 'I hate academies. I hate fixed ideas of what a thing should be, of how it should be done. I don't like imposing rules, because the person, the artist, must do what he feels is right, what he - as an individual - feels he must ddo. If we establish an academy, there can be no future for the modern dance. An art should be constantly changing; it cannot have fixed rules.' Doris Humphrey Yvonne Rainer Twyla Tharp Anna Sokolow

8. 'Does not the power, the magnificence of all creative art lie in knowing how to force chaos into form?' Erick Hawkins Mia Michaels Mary Wigman Ethan Stiefel

9. 'Men and women are very different athletes, and frankly, I didn't want to deal with the male potential, I wanted to deal with the female potential. Plus which, obviously men and women bond very differently. And at that time we wanted to begin very simply.' Ron Brown Doris Humphrey Twyla Tharp Mark Morris

10. 'I listen to music because I love it and occasionally something sticks out that I think would be a good dance. That's where I start. I study the score and listen, think, then make up a dance. Usually, it's the music that determines who is in it, how long it is and what it's like. I do almost no choreographic homework; I do only musical homework.' Charles Weidman Yvonne Rainer Doug Varone Mark Morris