Dancer Quotations

Physical expression was my first language: Before I was an actor, I was a dancer, an acrobat, a mime and a street performer.

I always wanted to make a pop record. I'm a dancer myself, so I want to make something that people listen to and just want to dance to.

I've never danced professionally as a ballet dancer, but all of my training is ballet, and I am a Fosse dancer.

I will never give up my dream of being a prima ballerina and backup dancer for Justin Timberlake!

I copied my brother. He was a natural dancer. Graceful. People always asked did we study ballet. We never did.

The discipline that ballet requires is obsessive. And only the ones who dedicate their whole lives are able to make it. Your toenails fall off and you peel them away and then you're asked to dance again and keep smiling. I wanted to become a professional ballet dancer.

The actual cheerleaders in our film are all Broadway dancers.

I don't date dancers, but I've always wanted to teach guys how to dance.

I was a go-go dancer at the Dom on East 10th Street in NYC. This was a glittering ballroom over Stanley's Bar. 1965.

My current role model is Beyonce. She is such a strong woman. She can do everything. She has kept herself together and has balanced her life perfectly. She is a great singer, great dancer and a great looker and is now a good mother and wife.

My body can't demonstrate. It isn't willing to explore movements the way it used to. I've always had to find the movement in myself then show it in myself. If I've got the sense of movement for the character, I expect the dancer to get it too.

If I had an extra 20 or 50 years physically, I could have been the dancer of my dreams. But I never became that dancer.

I was a dancer first, which made me realize how much I loved performing.

Before I was an actor I was a break dancer, one of those street performers you see. I guess my introduction into the professional world of performing was a stint as back up dancer for Lionel Richie and I performed at the closing ceremony at the '84 Olympics.

I met my wife, Doreen, who was a dancer in the show.

As a dancer I've always checked my body constantly; 'Am I having a good day or am I having a fat day?'

I always did plays. When I was in kindergarten, I got chosen to be Alvin in 'The Chipmunks.' We did a Chipmunks song. I was always a natural performer. It was easy for me. I danced and I sang, and all that stuff. I felt like I'd be something in the arts, but it vacillated between being a dancer and a singer, or whatever.

Kleiber was the perfect dancer - so perfect that you could see the process. After all, dance is a process; it's a series of snapshots. Kleiber knew how to connect people to the flow, so he could stop managing people.

Because muscle is heavier than fat, dancers weigh more than you might think, but they are usually very lean.

I look at the dancers and I get the inspiration for the work from them.

I taught them everything they know, but not everything I know.

Any Michael Jackson song will make any dancer go nuts.

As much as I love to dance, and I still take class, aerobics and that sort of thing, and I still move very well and all of that - I'm really not a dancer anymore.

People strangely revere dance. They see it as another world, and dancers are somehow mysterious - just because they don't speak.

In my heart, my first desire was to be a dancer. I always wanted to dance and I danced from the time I was 7 till I was well into my 30s.

I heard a lot in school, 'You've got a really great talent, but there's no way you're going to be a dancer with that body.

As you get older, the physical abilities decrease, which is particularly frustrating because your brain gets so good! So as you are becoming less technically or physically able, younger dancers are emerging who need the space to perform.

I have such a dancer's spirit that I tend to leap around the house. Once I leaped onto my bed and landed on the floor. But I danced more for myself than I did for other people.

Dancers can get to see almost everything now. When I used to go into companies to make a piece, the dancers had hardly ever seen my work. Now they can watch it on YouTube. It means they're much faster at picking up material.

I came from the musical stage. My first show was '110 In The Shade.' I started as a ballet dancer and then sort of gravitated toward musical theater, so any time I got asked to sing or dance, it was a joy for me.

I think what really clicked for me was when I started booking commercials as a dancer... just being on set and seeing every element of production, it was magic to me.

There are positives to moving around and changing companies: you put things in perspective; you can compare living and working conditions. Living in one city, you tend to take things for granted; your view is much more narrow. In Europe, a dancer can leave for a year and still keep her original contract.

I'm more of a freestyle dancer. I like to do my own thing.

It's funny because a lot of people that know me as a dancer, don't know that I'm a singer, and a lot of people that know I can sing don't know I can dance. And so, I feel like at some point I have to show them both and really be able to display it and showcase it, and put that out there.

I wanted to be a professional dancer for a period of time, and I did a lot of dancing and choreography and got paid for it.

Ideally if I settled down with a wife I would love to form my own troupe of mini dancers!

For me, a dancer is part of an artist's entertainment - 'backup dancer' isn't even in my vocabulary.

One is born to be a great dancer.

A creative person has to create. It doesn't really matter what you create. If such a dancer wanted to go out and build the cactus gardens where he could, in Mexico, let him do that, but something that is creative has to go on.

A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.

I actually build my dreams around the dancers I've got in my company.

So many dancers paint. I used to paint. I started again recently. While I was dancing, I was very busy with my career. Start something else that makes use of your creative ability because if you don't you will die inside as a person.

Dancers, like all performing artists, like nothing better than to be challenged.

If a ballet dancer falls over, it's knowing how to get out looking clumsy that counts.

Certainly the life of a dancer is very difficult. The training is very hard and relentlessly grueling.

I told Celine Dion not to record that 'Titanic' song. That's about as big as you can get. 'Flashdance?' I thought, 'Welder by day, disco dancer by night - who wants to see that?'

I was a dancer when I got discovered, and I started working immediately. I started being in commercials and doing guest star roles. My first big thing, which happened maybe six months after being discovered, was 'Bring It On: All or Nothing.'

In the states we all have this idea, everyone who wants to be the next best singer, next best dancer. Those same wants and desires are in India, too.

I know I'm not the greatest singer or dancer, but that doesn't interest me, I'm interested in being provocative and pushing people's buttons.

My mom was a dancer, my dad's a singer and I've always had that kind of music in my life.

My background is somewhat unusual, as I trained to be a ballet dancer. I worked in the theatre for eight or nine years as a contemporary dancer. But as an actor one does read Shakespeare and does try to learn the classics.

The body cannot lie. You cannot be somebody else onstage, no matter how good of an actor or dancer or singer you are. When you open your arms, move your finger, the audience knows who you are, you know.

There's a line of dancers waiting to get into Sydney Dance Company.

Dancers are kept in a perpetual state of pre-puberty, and for young girls in particular, that type of pressure breeds insecurities.

Fred Astaire was a more formal, trained dancer who loved waltzing and only danced with the girls.

It's not that I wanted to be an actor; it's that I didn't want to be a dancer! I was trained in traditional Chinese dance, and after working so hard it seemed unfair to just disappear into a group.

In Europe, a great dancer might be on the same level as a movie star. In America, not so.

To join or not to join films was the biggest choice I had to make. I'd done two years of biogenetic engineering, was an economics graduate and a gold medalist. I had also been a Bharatanatyam dancer from age five, always won the best actress award in school. Finally, I decided to do things for my soul, chose to act.

I was a professional dancer before I was an actor.

I used to be a dancer, and for me it was a really good combination of dance and acting.

I used to love to see Willie Pep and Ray Robinson. To me, the epitome of a great athlete is a great boxer. I just love the rhythm of seeing a man dance, slip punches. I loved the dancers and boxers. I would see them and be mesmerized.

We are a very typical Spanish family - a bullfighter, an actress, a flamenco dancer and singer!

I had been a ballet dancer and never could make a living, and just being so excited that I got to, all of a sudden, live as an actor.

Little did I know that there's nothing more competitive in the world than a professional ballroom dancer. They are as competitive as Olympic athletes.

A good dancer is an educated one, so dont abandon school.

Mum, who had been a dancer with a small ballet company before she got married, was full of encouragement. She didn't say, "This is really good, you should do this", She just encouraged us to do whatever we liked.

When I was a dancer, I felt this great sense of knowing my body and being in my body, and I think it's really easy as women to lose that and not really be one and loving it.

I think I just have this need to be a storyteller. That's why I wasn't a great dancer - I couldn't articulate a story. I was a better choreographer. I have the need to to just express myself in that way. I can't explain it.

You just can't take a crash course to be a tango dancer in a movie.

If you want a dancer's body, dance. Dance aerobics is my favourite cardio. It's very frustrating if people think you have to become a dancer to do it - you don't.

They do say, the smaller the feet, the better the dancer.

But you do have to start young as a dancer if you're going to achieve the physical skills necessary.

I was using tape loops for dancers and dance production. I had very funky primitive equipment, in fact technology wasn't very good no matter how much money you had.

When you're a dancer who is injured, you are at the bottom of the food chain. We are so replaceable.

I trained in every form of dance - started as a tap dancer when I was a kid, then contemporary, ballet, ballroom, everything. Russian, Swedish.

As a dancer, I love music that makes me want to move.

I wanted to be a dancer my whole life. And when I gave it up to act, I always had a really sad part of myself that missed it and missed performing and missed being physical in that way.

I really wanted to make it as a ballet dancer to make my mom proud. But it didnt happen.

I also loved musicals because I was a dancer.

I've been on stage since I was 7. That's where I'd rather be than anywhere else. Just because you can do a bunch of things doesn't mean you are a bunch of things. I can act. I can sing. But I am a dancer

I don't go to these places where there are belly dancers and this and that.

Like most dancers, I love lip stains! We hate gloss because hair gets stuck in it.

I like my feet. I have a tattoo on my foot with my last name. They're dancer feet. They're pretty. My toes are proportioned nicely. And they're strong - I can pinch people with my toes.

I was a dancer of no repute. But dance taught me a lot. You walk into a dance studio knowing you have to walk out with a dance. You improvise.

I'm not a great dancer. I know I'm not. But I know that I can move. I can throw shapes, just not in the right order.

I became a dancer late and an actor late.

I already feel a bit annoyed at myself for writing screenplays. It's a bit, I don't know, model-singer-dancer-actress that went to a posh school. There's something too weirdly predictable about it.

What's a dancer's worst enemy? Sometimes it's age, but sometimes it's the dancer themselves.

When other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers I kind of wanted to be a vampire.

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.

I'm glad I was born when I was. My time was the golden age of variety. If I were starting out again now, maybe things would happen for me, but it certainly would not be on a variety show with 28 musicians, 12 dancers, two major guest stars, 50 costumes a week by Bob Mackie. The networks just wouldn't spend the money today.

So many people report to be contemporary dancers, and they're not. They are sort of jazz dancers that feel like they're throwing a bit of classical in there. I mean, a true contemporary dancer has got ballet as their base and classical ballet, and that is their base. And then they choose to extemporize on that and go into a contemporary world.

I always want to have more dancers in my company.

What I mean is that none of my talents had a - what's that great word - rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer - there was nothing I could really say I was. The writing came much later. And, actually, thank God, because if I had said I'm a singer, I would really have just had one thing to do.

I remember when I was a dancer and I had to do this performance and I was really nervous about it, and I happened at that moment to go see 'Flashdance.' I mean, it's silly, but I walked out of that movie going 'what a feeling!' I walked out with confidence.

I didn't know I wanted to act until it was around 21. I had just come back to Los Angeles after two and half years of traveling and working as a dancer and singer and was looking for a new performing art to study. I started taking acting classes and fell in love.

As a kid, I was a dancer in Dick Whittington, Snow White and Cinderella. When I was 14, I played Baby Bear. I had a big head on, and you couldn't see my face. My mum was very disappointed.

I always recommend a sensible diet, including lots of carbohydrates and avoiding too much fat. Dancers don't need different fuel from other people - they just need more of it because they use more energy.

I'm thought of as a cool, unemotional dancer, but inside I'm not.

For me, as an actress, being a dancer has helped me. I've done it with my feet bloody.