These modern dance quotes will inspire you. Modern dance, a free, expressive style of dancing started in the early 20th century as a reaction to classical ballet. In recent years it has included elements not usually associated with dance, such as speech and film.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging modern dance quotes, modern dance sayings, and modern dance proverbs.
Best Modern Dance Quotes
- “The Dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing.” ~ Doris Humphrey
- “Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made.” ~ Ted Shawn
- “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.” ~ Albert Einstein
- “There are times when the simple dignity of movementcan fulfill the function of a volume of words.” ~ Doris Humphrey
-
“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.” ~ Martha Graham
- “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.” ~ Martha Graham
- “Now there is in a way a renaissance of modern dance – suddenly, it is more respected and discovered.” ~ Mikhail Baryshnikov
- “Modern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.” ~ Martha Graham
- “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.” ~ Twyla Tharp
-
“I would have to challenge the term, modern dance. I don’t really use that term in relation to my work. I simply think of it as dancing. I think of it as moving.” ~ Twyla Tharp
- “I used to dance when I was younger – ballet and modern dance.” ~ Nastassja Kinski
- “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.” ~ Sally Kirkland
- “If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
- “The modern dance is no dance in the first place, and when you’ve finally learned it, it’s not modern any more.” ~ Evan Esar
-
“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.” ~ Mark Morris
- “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.” ~ Marina Abramovic
- “I was used to dancing, but only when someone told you what to do. So in the nightclub I was all over the place, I combined everything. Street dance, modern dance, a bit of jazz and ballet, I was Twyla Tharp, I was Alvin Ailey, I was Michael Jackson. I didn’t care, I was free.” ~ Madonna Ciccone
- “I enjoy the freedom of modern dance as well as the constraints of classical dance.” ~ Deborah Bull
- “It’s like, say you’re a dancer and you’ve been studying modern dance your whole life so you’re used to a certain aesthetic of music or motivation or influence, if I send you something that you’re totally not used to or don’t understand, rarely does that work. On the average, you’re not gonna feel that and it won’t be you. You have to be in there.” ~ Jlin
-
“Americans will be amazed to find ho many of the modern dance steps are relics of the African heritage.” ~ Paul Robeson
- “DJing for people is fun until someone comes up with a phone screen that has ‘PLAY SOME RIHANNA’ written on it. I prefer to play older songs because they’re the ones I personally enjoy dancing and singing along to and modern dance music bores my brains out.” ~ Alexa Chung
- “For the first time since I began acting, I feel that I’ve found my place in the world, that there’s something out of my own culture which i can express and perhaps help others preserve..i have found out now that the African natives had a definite culture a long way beyond the culture of the Stone age…an integrated thing, which is still unspoiled by western influences…I think the Americans will be amazed to find how many of the modern dance steps are relics of African heritage.” ~ Paul Robeson
- “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.” ~ Jennifer Dunning
- “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.” ~ Essence Atkins
-
“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.'” ~ Nicolas Cage
- “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.” ~ Evan Rachel Wood
- “Sergio Trujillo’s choreography adds coals to the inferno, with movement that plain just doesn’t stop. We know from Jersey Boys that he can capture this style, but in Memphis, he kicks it up towards art, playing with the authentic touches to add some hits of Fosse or riffs from modern dance that take us just that extra step we need.” ~ Richard Ouzounian
