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I don't want to be cutting edge...To move in an art form, you don't have to push at the edges; you can dig down into the stuff itself.

Richard Alston (1948-), British choreographer

New York Times pg AR9, 9 May 2004

Dance is a life, everyday. Don't miss it. You're in bodies, you can move, you're not in wheelchairs. Where is your joy?

Pascal Haas

Entrepreneur

I am not a belly dancer.

Yasser Arafat (1929-2004), Palestinian statesman, when asked to disclose the funds given to him by Arab leaders

Choreography is mentally draining, but there's a pleasure in getting into the studio with the dancers and the music.

Alvin Ailey (1931-1989), USA choreographer

In this business, life is one long fund-raising effort.

Alvin Ailey (1931-1989), USA choreographer

Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances.

Maya Angelou (1928-), American autobiographer and poet

Dance is a sort of silent rhetoric.

Thoinot Arbeau (1519-1595, French cleric and writer, in Orchesographie

The way to heaven is too steep, too narrow for men to dance in and keep revel rout. No way is large or smooth enough for capering rousters, for jumping, skipping, dancing dames but that broad, beaten, pleasant road that leads to Hell. The gate of heaven is too narrow for whole rounds, whole troops of dancers to march in together.

Thoinot Arbeau (1519-1595, French cleric and writer, in Orchesographie

I have no desire to prove anything by dancing. I have never used it as an outlet or a means of expressing myself. I just dance. I just put my feet in the air and move them around.

Fred Astaire (1899-1987), USA dancer

www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/dance.html

You see, every once in a while I suddenly find myself dancing.

Fred Astaire (1899-1987), USA dancer

as Jerry Travers in the film Top Hat (1935)

You know, there's a difference between dancing and wrestling. In dancing, the main idea is to keep your partner's shoulders off the floor.

Fred Astaire (1899-1987), USA dancer

as Bake Baker in the film Follow the Fleet (1936)

When success goes to a dancer's feet, it's alright. When it goes to his head, he's top heavy.

Fred Astaire (1899-1987)

USA dancer, as Johnny Brett in Broadway Mellody of 1940 (1940)

Imagine a man like me having to dance for a living.

Fred Astaire (1899-1987), USA dancer

as Robert Davis in the film You Were Never Lovelier (1942)

Couldn't I be the fellow who never gets his name mentioned - the one they call 'a friend'? You know, 'Ginger Rogers and friend'.

Fred Astaire (1899-1987), USA dancer

as Fred Atwell in the film The Sky's the Limit (1943)

I am not Nijinsky. I am not Marlon Brando. I am Mrs. Hunter's little boy Tony - song and dance man.

Fred Astaire (1899-1987), USA dancer

as Tony Hunter in the film The Band Wagon (1953)

If the dance is right, there shouldn't be a single superfluous movement.

Fred Astaire (1899-1987), USA dancer

Some people feel that good dancers are born. All the good dancers I've known have been taught or trained.

Fred Astaire (1899-1987), USA dancer

Can't act!. Can't sing!. Balding!. Can dance a little.

Evaluation of Fred Astaire's very first screen test

I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.

Margaret Atwood (1939-), Canadian author

in "Lady Oracle"

Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop.

. H. Auden (1907-1973), English poet

All the dancer's gestures are signs of things, and the dance called rational, because it aptly signifies and displays something over and above the pleasure of the senses.

Saint Augustine (354-430), Roman theologian

Fine dancing, I believe like virtue, must be its own reward. Those who are standing by are usually thinking of something very different.

Jane Austen (1775-1817), English novelist

It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accruing either to body or mind.

Jane Austen (1775-1817), English novelist

in "Emma"

To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.

Jane Austen (1775-1817), English novelist