Dance Inspiration Quotes

The reason I started dancing in the first place was my dad took me to see 'Bring In 'da Noise, Bring In 'da Funk' when I was 9.

Fred Astaire told me things I will never forget. Gene Kelly also said he liked my dancing. It was a fantastic experience because I felt I had been inducted into an informal fraternity of dancers, and I felt so honored because these were the people I most admired in the world.

I've always felt that Balanchine is my ultimate teacher. I learn the most from observing his work and also dancing in it.

I wanted to be Gene Kelly. Well really, I just wanted to dance with Cyd Charisse.

I know, for me, dance did inspire me. Not just in how I feel but that confidence of being able to hold myself and come into a room and just feel comfortable with my body and how I stand and how you present yourself and just how you wear clothes, even.

My family plays a big part in my role as a dancer and my sister was my first trainer. She's still my role model and inspiration until this day. She was my first trainer, she taught me my first steps.

We've had nothing but support from everybody in the dance world for a National Dance Day.

Balanchine is the number one influence for me. His work was really musically driven. He and Jerome Robbins were the ones who really showed me that dance could be about the inner relation between movement and music. When I was a student first seeing their work, I was like, 'Oh, this is a thing?'

I wasn't into tapping when it began dying down. Ever since I started, it's been alive for me. I just want to keep on dancing. I want to do it all.

Maybe we can use a metaphor for it, out of dance. I think for many years I was aware of the need, in dance and in life, to breathe deeply and to take in more air than we usually take in.

In terms of my childhood, it was normal. You go through school, do well in school, and then I went to university. The performance arts aspect was never really an option because it was never in my family. Nobody was there to teach me anything about that. It wasn't until maybe my second year of university that I got inspired to dance.

I say over and over again that I am just standing on the shoulders of so many who have set this path for me, and they may not be seen or recognized or have been given an opportunity to have a voice, but I'm here representing all of those dancers. Dance Theatre of Harlem Virginia Johnson, Tai Jimenez, Lauren Anderson.

I remember watching Audrey Hepburn dancing in movies, and I was inspired by how graceful she looked, though I understand it was no easy task.

Compositionally I always wanted to be like Fred Astaire.

Give me something to dance about and I'll dance it.

I love movin'. I was observant growing up, watching Michael Jackson and John Travolta. I'd close my eyes, see the moves.

My dancing is Hawaiian-inspired but I also get a little fresh when it comes to my faster songs.

The first memory I have was my sisters dancing to the radio when they played records by Benny Goodman and Harry James and of the sort. But the record that got me was a record by Derek Sampson, who was a young guy, called 'Boogie Express,' and it was boogie-woogie. Really, it was on fire, and that got me.

Growing up in Niagara Falls, Ontario, I took classes as a young girl and became very serious about ballet, and also performed with a local company, although it wasn't a professional company.

I started dancing because of Janet Jackson.

I'm born originally in Toronto, and I have what I call my 'Fame' story. I took a Greyhound bus and went to Alvin Ailey and received Dunham, Horton, Graham technique there, but I could never take my eyes off of Balanchine doing 'Nutcracker'; to me he's the best who ever did it.

I make dance music because I love to dance. But I want to think at the same time.

I grew up watching old musicals and seeing Ginger Rogers wearing a beautiful fitted bodice that had ostrich feathers. I love how it moved when she danced. Theatrical pieces like that stayed with me. I wanted to grow up to wear those kinds of things.

No one around me was obsessed with Fred Astaire except for me. It just snowballed, really. I started with tap lessons. When I didn't have tap shoes, I taped nickels on the bottom of my penny loafers.

My genuine passion for dance was born watching Ballet Rambert perform Christopher Bruce's harrowing 'Ghost Dances.'