Modern Dance Quotes

I had danced with Janet Jackson and P. Diddy so I had done a bunch of hip hop. Really and truly my roots are in modern and ballet but, professionally, that's not really out there any more, unfortunately, so these artists aren't really having a lot of ballet dancers behind them so I had to learn hip hop really quick.

Desire is the first thing a modern dancer should have. Skill can be developed. But if you don't have desire as a modern dancer, forget it.

Dance has been a driving force in my life for 25 years. From music videos and hip hop, to jazz and musical theater, to ballet and classic modern dance, I have had extensive exposure to a variety of techniques that inspire my own electric style.

I used to dance when I was younger - ballet and modern dance.

I had art as a major, along with English, French and History. I had dance, modern dance. In English I was allowed to write my own poetry, which I eventually got published.

I danced modern dance my whole life, and it makes me feel young again.

I never studied with Balanchine, but his work was very important to me.

I could have been a dancer. I just never got my shot at it.

When I first moved to New York, I was friends with a lot of dancers - people from Merce Cunningham's company and things like that.

Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times. The dancers don't even look at one another. They are just a lot of isolated individuals jiggling in a kind of self-hypnosis and dancing with others only to remind themselves that we are not completely alone in this world.

Do people in the twenty-first century still dance?" My heart beat thundered in my ears, far louder than the slow music. "Um," I said, barely able to swallow, my throat had gone so dry. "Sometimes." "How about now?" he asked. And then his strong arms were encircling my waist, his breath soft against my cheek as he gently whispered my name: "Susannah. Susannah...

I was a Spanish dancer. I don't mean to put that down, because that was great, too, but nothing like the kind of dancing you had to do in 'West Side Story,' which was called jazz.

I majored in dance in college.

Modern dance isn't anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.

While other girls swooned over The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, I worshipped Rudolf Nureyev and Isadora Duncan.

I got the part [in Into the Forest], I started taking ballet again to try to regain my strength back. I actually love that it was changed to Crystal Pite's modern dance. And I wouldn't even really call it modern dance because it feels like it's in its own genre.

Having Alexei Ratmansky create a new Romeo and Juliet for The National Ballet of Canada to mark our 60th anniversary is a dream come true. His aesthetic -- steeped in the Russian school but open to contemporary sources -- is ideal for this work and for our company, which, with our classical heritage and our passion for the modern, is perfectly suited to his distinctive dance vision.

Merce is my favorite artist in any field.

My background is in modern dance. I was a dancer and a choreographer before I was a director, and in dance, you can't cheat. Your leg goes up in the air, or it doesn't. So when I direct, I'm a big preparer.

Americans will be amazed to find ho many of the modern dance steps are relics of the African heritage.

I enjoy the freedom of modern dance as well as the constraints of classical dance.

You know I very much respect Yvonne Rainer, she is very important - in American dance, the entire development of modern dance, and creating a wonderful physical language.

I grew up as a dancer, and music and dance are so closely tied that in ballet class, you're listening to all this classical music, and in modern class, you're working with a live drummer. It was something that always made me feel really comfortable, and I've had a connection to since the beginning.

When I started making dances in the '60s, narrative dance was sort of off the radar screen. What was important at the time in the avant-garde was minimalism.

Dance music is no longer a simple Donna Summer beat. It's become a whole language that I find fascinating and exciting. Eventually, it will lose the dance tag and join the fore of rock.