Mikhail Baryshnikov Quotes

Dance is the hidden language of the soul of the body.

I never studied dance, but if you look at 'Wild At Heart,' my mother saw that movie and said, 'You are a dancer. Look at how you're moving: all that strange energy is like modern dance.'

Dancing is more than just moving body parts; it is a pathway of expressing your deepest inner thoughts.

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.

Sometimes I say I feel more like a dancer than an actor, because there are things implied about being an actor that I don't really like. I feel more comfortable with the word 'performer'. I like being the thing. I like being the doer. There's a factualness to it. And then certain resonances happen out of how you apply yourself physically.

The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.

The real message of the Dance opens up the vistas of life to all who have the urge to express beauty with no other instrument than their own bodies, with no apparatus and no dependence on anything other than space.

I just play the little guy, except I play him through dance.

Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made.

And dance is wonderful because dance is so immediate.

I always loved to dance and move. I probably should have been a mime or something like that.

The voice is a second face.

Dancing is like - it's another way of communicating, no?

I want to let my feet speak.

I love dance - trying to express myself wordlessly.

Dancing doesn't have a language.

For me, the importance in learning about the dance is using it as a voice. It's not about a step, it's about a way to express oneself.

Growing up as a little, introverted boy, dance was the only way I could communicate. For me, it's the greatest language - no words. Sharing people's stories through the art of movement is magical.

Generally, I don't need any music to dance. For me, dance is not because of the music. It is simply because I've found the rhythm of life.

I love what a women embodies. I love our bodies; I love the way we communicate with our bodies. I love the way dance creates movement. It's art in motion.

I would much rather watch myself than listen to myself. The moving is second nature, but the listening... that's the art.

The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.

You have to learn to express differently. Whenever I do TV or film, I ask if I can see the shot to see, to see if it's full body or a close-up. That helps me understand how to communicate.

I'm a very physical person. I'm very tactile. I wrestled in college, so a lot of my communication with the world comes through physicality - what I take in and what I put out there.

Dance, to me, is an expression of who we are.