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

Twyla Tharp

(Source: theballetblog)

"The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie." 

Agnes de Mille

(Source: theballetblog)

"Dancers are stripped enough onstage. You don’t have to know more about them than they’ve given you already." 

Mikhail Baryshnikov

(Source: theballetblog)

"Dance is for everybody. I believe that the dance came from the people and that it should always be delivered back to the people." 

Alvin Ailey

(Source: theballetblog)

"The practice mirror is to be used for the correction of faults, not for a love affair, and the figure you watch should not become your dearest friend." 

Agnes de Mille

(Source: theballetblog)

"Art is the only way to run away without leaving home." 

Twyla Tharp

(Source: theballetblog)

"We should realize in a vivid and revolutionary sense that we are not in our bodies but our bodies are in us." 

Ruth St. Denis

(Source: theballetblog)

"I see dance being used as communication between body and soul, to express what it too deep to find for words." 

Ruth St. Denis

(Source: theballetblog)

As soon as you become afraid to make a fool of yourself, you’re in trouble. I decided I may as well just see if I can live with myself making millions of mistakes and learn something from it.

Gelsey Kirkland

"If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point dancing it." 

Isadora Duncan

(Source: theballetblog)

"Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts. For it is no mere translation or abstraction of life. It is life itself." 

Henry Havelock Ellis (via terpsichores)

"Where there is no heart there is no art." 

Anna Pavlova (via dancequotes)

"Many other women kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion." 

Agnes de Mille

(Source: theballetblog)

"The classical performer invites the audience to eavesdrop on the most sublime conversation. To achieve such empathy through movement requires of the dancer the most demanding kind of inspiration: the mind must reckon with love, as if to bind and heal a broken heart. For the audience, this is best understood during those moments of enthusiasm when the clapping of hands signifies a kind of reverence, when thoughts are able to comprehend the feelings that have been inspired by the artist." 

Gelsey Kirkland in Dancing on my Grave

(Source: theballetblog)

"Ballet is a riddle of means and ends. Speaking from experience, that ridde cannot be solved soley through formal rules applied in the mirror. Classical virtuosity is more than technique, line, proportion and balance. It is as if the performer and spectator come together to hold in their hands a bird with a broken wing.The creature can be felt to stir, to struggle for freedom. Its life responds to human warmth; its wing might brush your cheek as it flies away." 

Gelsey Kirkland, Dancing on My Grave

(Source: theballetblog)