Modern Dance Quotes

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.

The early giants of modern dance – Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis – barely left traces of their art.

The modern dance is no dance in the first place, and when you’ve finally learned it, it’s not modern any more.

Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery – what it all means, the way the little bone near the ankle relates itself to the floor for a perfect stance, a perfect plie.

A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I’m beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.

A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet, that the two disciplines were totally separate, and if you did one, you couldn’t do the other. I’m beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.

What we want from modern dance is courage and audacity.

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.

There’s a style in modern dance right now called Release Technique. It’s based on a feeling of falling and catching yourself, and I thought it was such a good metaphor for the way life feels.

There are times when the simple dignity of movementcan fulfill the function of a volume of words.

If nobody comes to your shows, then it’s modern dance. If everybody comes to your shows and no one likes it, is that ballet? I don’t know.

I did not want to be a tree, a flower or a wave. In a dancer’s body, we as audience must see ourselves, not the imitated behavior of everyday actions, not the phenomenon of nature, not exotic creatures from another planet, but something of the miracle that is a human being.

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

If I were to try to break into the world of modern dance, after the first few rejections the logical response might be, practice even more. But after the 12,000th rejection, maybe I should realize this isn’t a viable career option.

We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.

I was in the chorus in high school, not a soloist. I was on the basketball team. I was in modern dance, part of the group. I was a cheerleader, part of the group. I played the violin, part of the orchestra. I never wanted to be out there alone. Ever.

If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.

When I look at the people who are the guiding figures in modern dance, I think, ‘This does not look to me like the way I want to spend my days.’

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.

I attended Professional Children’s School in Manhattan because my ballet and modern dance schedules were intensive and had started to interfere with regular school hours.

I never studied dance, but if you look at ‘Wild At Heart,’ my mother saw that movie and said, ‘You are a dancer. Look at how you’re moving: all that strange energy is like modern dance.’

The Dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing.

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

Kun-Yang Lin is a young Taiwanese choreographer with strong American modern dance roots. (His) New York debut at the Cunningham studio were notable for their craft and sturdy spirituality.

The eternal and uneasy relationship between ballet and modern dance endures, but radically altered in tone and intensity.