Naima Adedapo Quotes

Pure dance form is not dying.

I was in a competing company and have been dancing since I was four - ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop - so it's a huge part of my life and my music.

I started learning Bharatnatyam from the age of three. I have also learnt folk dance.

I never danced growing up.

I've been known to have a good step or two. I'm half Samoan, you know, and part of our culture is singing and dancing daily.

I've always danced. I've always been around it.

I'm not interested in seeing dance die. It's not to my advantage. Nor is it to our culture's advantage or anybody else's.

I wanted to do dance with the same seriousness as art was done and acknowledged, not with the entertainment factor that is always connected to theater and film.

I'm the first one out on the dance floor. In college I had to take jazz, ballet and tap dancing, but, before that, it was just social.

I approach dancing from a different angle than those who begin dancing at 8 or 9. Those who have studied from the beginning never question anything.

I started dancing when I was 5 years old. Ballet. Flamenco.

My mother was very keen I learn dance and I learnt so many forms.

Initially, I was into dance and learnt Bharatnatyam for eight years. I appeared on various TV shows.

I grew up going to see my sister dance, both at the ballet and later as a modern dancer, and have always been a big fan of the ballet. So I have had a long relationship with dance.

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.

Americans will be amazed to find ho many of the modern dance steps are relics of the African heritage.

I grew up dancing salsa - you know, a traditional Puerto Rican dance.

When I was younger, I would see shea butter being sold on the street, and I was interested how people were still coating themselves in the theater of Africanism. You see that in dashikis and hairstyles and music.

Dance is not endangered - it will always find a way to express itself.

I had always choreographed a little, beginning in high school. And I leaned toward choreography. I always had an overview of what was going on.

I found I loved musicals as much or more than the pure dance world. I also think I became tired of dancing for other dancers.

I still study dance, and it's definitely something I want to incorporate in the future. It's always been my first love.

All people from small islands dance funny.

I was always the kid down the street who got the other kids to put on a show. But it was only when I was 19, and discovered ballet and contemporary dance, that I got interested in the fact that you could have a whole evening of dance - rather than just waiting for the dancers in a musical.

I think it's one thing to be able to dance, and it's another thing to learn all the wonderful moments of dance because in my day... it was the moving of dance.