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Inside the Dancer’s Art

This image of a dancer stretching is among my very first dance photographs and my most personally meaningful. Taken in 1985 at the dance studio where I trained, it reminds me of my yearning for the stage, the drive to perform, and the physical challenges I faced. Most of all, it informs me that I will always be, first and last, a dancer.

Rose Eichenbaum

Dancer’s identity unknown

Dance changes you. You can never go back to being the person you were before.

Joaquin Escamilla

Chelsea Hackett

Rei Aoo

Dancing is how I connect with the power we all have to change the world.

Mark Mendonca

I can always remember the dances, even from the shows I did forty years ago.

Gwen Verdon

Intertwining moves, caressing ever so lyrically—adagio-ing with God—a romance with my creator.

Natalie Willes

I dance because I must. I cannot be stilled.

Natalie Willes

My dance is a soulful articulation of unspoken truths.

Julie Adams

How I’d execute moves and steps—attack them, embrace them, or shy away from them—always had a direct correlation to what was going on in my mind, my heart, and in my life at that time.

Stephanie Guiland

Donald Byrd’s/The Group

The doctors said I needed a hip replacement. My career of more than two decades was over. I cried for a month and hid in my apartment, drinking heavily. Without dance I didn’t want to live. What other skills did I have? I went from being the lucky dancer who was always working to someone who had no income.

Michael Blake

Donald Byrd’s/The Group

My agenda is to see how far I can push the body. I don’t mean just the physical body. I mean the mind too.

Donald Byrd

Donald Byrd’s/The Group

You can’t discover new things about your soul unless you take risks—go out on a limb. The challenge to go out there becomes a challenge to the self. It’s how you show your mettle as a person.

David Parsons

Parsons Dance Company

There is no manual, no road map to a successful dance career. You have to write your own.

Daniel Ezralow

Every human emotion can be conveyed and shown through dance—expressly romance, passion, and joy.

Parissa with Desmond James

Movement and action are the only things that really communicate. I can use words, but if I don’t include my body to support the words, then the words might not be believed.

Rennie Harris

Rennie Harris Puremovement

Bonnie Oda HomseyJohn Pennington

American Repertory Dance Company

I am, and will always be a dancer. Every cell in my body is primed to be so.

Nancy Colahan

What empower me on stage are the combustion of instinct, physicality, imagination, and the risk of being vulnerable.

Bonnie Oda Homsey

Dance is how you express what you know about your own spirituality.

John Pennington

Know your own power and use it to reveal to the audience what you want them to know about you.

Janet Eilber

Martha Graham Dance Company

What has always driven me is the search for a new step.

Gregory Hines

State Street Ballet

The power of imagination can shine a light into our souls where the essence of beauty is discovered and the artistry of performance is born.

Rodney Gustafson

Artistic Director, State Street Ballet

Yuan-Ming Chang

State Street Ballet

Ballet means everything to me—like the air I breathe and the sun that warms my soul.

Silvia Rotaru

State Street Ballet

I feel ill before every performance. My stomach churns, my heart races, my palms sweat. But as soon as I step on the stage in front of an audience all that goes away. I become empowered—bold, confident, strong!

Alyson Mattoon

State Street Ballet

To move an audience we have to be more than just an instrument of the dance. We have to become the art form itself.

Silver Barkes

State Street Ballet

State Street Ballet

On stage, I am my truest self—the person I want to reveal and project out into the universe.

Leila Drake Fossek

State Street Ballet

Lu Wang

State Street Ballet

What my dancers and I try to do is talk about real life. I want to move people and inspire them to feel good about themselves. I want them to have the desire to have their spirits set free.

Ronald K. Brown

Evidence, A Dance Company

Evidence, A Dance Company

I have been a part of the history of Mexican dance in California for almost forty years. I have gone from social activist to dancer, to dance teacher, to dance artist, to choreographer. I don’t really know where one role ends and the others begin. Maybe all of them are very much still in me.

Gema Sandoval

Founder and Artistic Director, Danza Floricanto

Once I felt the heat in my body, I could do anything. I felt such passion for the dance. I even performed when I was sick with fever because I felt the dance would heal me.

José Greco

Before every performance I feel a huge emotional weight—the weight of my life. But once I begin to move, the weight lightens and lifts away.

Carmela Greco

You usually don’t know how your dancing affects people. But when someone comes up to you after a performance with tears in their eyes and says, “You touched my spirit, you touched my soul,” that’s when you know you’ve made a difference.

Matthew Rushing

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Nature is not a backdrop to life but a dynamic influence. When applied to movement it leads to awareness, creativity, and regeneration.

Anna Halprin

To me, the highest compliment I could ever receive is to be called a dancer. A dancer is someone who is God-like.

Judith Jamison

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

I do exactly what I want and try not to lie too much.

Mark Morris

Mark Morris Dance Group

We have to know this body we’re in. We might think of it as a shell. You fill that shell in a way no one else can.

Katherine Dunham

The artist should do what he feels he must and be as free as he dares to be.

Bill T. Jones

It doesn’t matter how many pirouettes you own and how pretty you are. Usually the ones who get the role are the ones who do their homework, put their heart and soul into it, and want to serve.

Ann Reinking

People often believe that it’s angst and torment that inspires creative work, but for me it’s love. Love is the most powerful source from which all creativity grows.

Tommy Tune

Dancers will do anything they’re asked. Dancers are our artistic soldiers.

Shirley MacLaine

All I’ve ever wanted was to touch that one person out there in the dark.

Chita Rivera

I was humbled by the power of dance and scared to death of it at the same time. For me it was life or death—everything or nothing!

Paula Kelly

Bob Fosse showed me how to get inside my body, to slow down and focus. He taught me that it was never just about the steps but rather, why am I doing the steps and how do they make me feel?

Liza Minnelli

When you dance, your soul soars. Time does not exist. It can be centuries or just a second. It feels like there is no war in the world, no hate, no disease. It feels like anything you care to imagine.

Robert La Fosse

I was only twenty-three when I found myself deeply conflicted—become a movie star or prima ballerina. I knew if I were to pursue acting I would not be able to keep up with my dance training. To be a ballerina you have to be in top form and possess a victorious attitude toward every aspect of life. After much soul searching I decided to stop dancing. I gave away my toe shoes and informed MGM executives that I wouldn’t dance anymore. I was heartbroken.

Leslie Caron

If there is no passion behind your movement, the audience will just sit there and watch you, but they won’t be captivated by you.

Fernando Bujones

Dance is a spiritual language we can use to feed our souls, communicate with each other, and show respect for all peoples.

Cleo Parker Robinson

Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Company

Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Company

Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Company

Art is created out of things you’re reminded of. It’s associative. Dance without reference is unlikely to evoke an emotional response.

Robby Barnett

Pilobolus

Dance is very much like language. Its power is not in the meaning of the words but rather in the syntax, in the structure.

Édouard Lock

La La La Human Steps