Dance Revolution Quotes

Psy is fantastic. He's shifted the planet. He's got the whole world dancing. And it's a rarity in this world. Only four people made that happen in history - James Brown, Michael Jackson, yours truly and Psy.

I am the Alexander Graham Bell of the phone company, the Christopher Columbus of America because after 'The Twist' everything changed, .. Watch the films from 1958 up to 1959, and watch American Bandstand during that time. After the song came out, everything was different.

With her grace and grit, and the will to lead change, Misty Copeland is truly a ballerina for our time.

Isadore [Duncan], who had an un-American genius for art, for organizing love, maternity, politics and pedagogy on a great personal scale, had also an un-American genius for grandeur.

One day, the dance charts will be the biggest chart in the music world. Because we all need to dance. This planet will be a fun planet when the judges in court will end the day with a dance!

Don Cornelius did not want to see how I really danced - I was doing hip-hop, and it was foreign to people out in California. They only knew about popping and locking, so they were not keen on hip-hop dancing.

I think Mike Nichols is brilliant, but I think Jerry Robbins was a genius.

Has there ever been a dance career with more ups and downs than Twyla Tharp's? Or with more varied ambitions? Or larger ambition?

I think there's no question that Michael Jackson was the foremost entertainer of his generation; perhaps of all time, arguably, taking the skills of a Sammy Davis, Jr., bringing together the street dance of African American urban culture, joining them to the politics of dance, of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly on that sphere alone.

The early giants of modern dance - Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis - barely left traces of their art.

Chubby Checker changed the dance floor.

The crazy thing about the dab is like - dance moves, once you create them, they last forever.

The white youth of today have begun to react to the fact that the American Way of Life is a fossil of history. What do they care if their old baldheaded and crew-cut elders don't dig their caveman mops? They couldn't care less about the old, stiff-assed honkies who don't like their new dances: Frog, Monkey, Jerk, Swim, Watusi. All they know is that it feels good to swing to way-out body-rhythms instead of dragging across the dance floor like zombies to the dead beat of mind-smothered Mickey Mouse music.

The future of ballet is really in the hands of the creators, so if it's something that interests them to push the envelope with gender roles, then I think it will change. But if that's not of interest to a dance-maker, if their interest is to sort of preserve the way things have been done for the past 200 years, then nothing is going to change.

There would never have been a British Ballet without Diaghilev. He had a wonderful influence.

The way Alvin Ailey has transformed modern dance and dance in general is the fact of variety. It's a cornucopia of ways to move. There are choreographers in the company as - as diverse, as different from each other as Donald McKayle and Bill T. Jones, or Jawole Zollar and John Butler, Lar Lubovitch, you know, and Judith Jamison.

Modern music and artistry would look and sound completely different if not for the groundbreaking contributions Michael Jackson gifted to the world.

Despite the rigid classicism of the famous Paris Opera school and company, the French have done more than their share to unmoor la Danse from its traditions and standards.

I compare the Twist to the electric light, The Twist is me, and I'm it. I'm the electric light.

When I started out in this business, dance was not at the height it is now. It was almost like, you're either a dancer or an actress.

Martha Graham, along with George Balanchine, is one of the two commanding figures in 20th-century American dance. For those much younger than I am, her genius as a performer will have to be taken on faith - and on the always-suspect evidence of film. What will last, if things go well, is her genius as a choreographer, as a woman of the theater.

I think that Michael Jackson, just as an entertainer, as a figure who embodies the contradictions of black identity and the possibilities of R&B music in the '70s and '80s, will continue to be one of the most recognized and formidable human beings that we've ever produced in our tradition.