Dance Tradition Quotes

When I went to Moscow, I felt I was relearning Swan Lake - which was written for the Bolshoi - and being immersed in a tradition and history I had never experienced. It took a while to adjust to living there and learning the language, but now I have lots of friends. I get the best of two completely different worlds.

Acting is different from dance. The black-and-whiteness of dancing is mostly about the technical form - like, this is how people have been doing it for millions of years. You can't let down those ballerinas who died a long time ago. My teacher will say, "This person would be ashamed!" And it's like, oh God. But with acting, it's different because people like something fresh. You can mix it up and create your own thing and it's not necessarily wrong.

There was always dance in opera until people forgot to keep it going.

I was a dancer, and my father was a dancer, so I really grew up in that environment.

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.

I've been doing African dance all my life.

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

I haven't had any formal training, but I guess dance comes naturally to us - people from the north. See how much we dance at weddings.

However, the moral center of New York City, I believe, is the New York City Ballet.

Fred Astaire was a more formal, trained dancer who loved waltzing and only danced with the girls.

It's weird when you see pieces of choreography that were done for you 15 or 20 years ago and now they are being done by another dance company.

As long as there are dancers around who love to dance, there will be an Alvin Ailey American Dance Company. We miss him so much, but he's alive as soon as you see a dancer hit the stage.

My mum and dad teach, and all my brothers and sisters have been in 'Riverdance' and so forth. So I was forced to become a dancer; it's part of my family history.

There's no dancer alive better than those of the 1950s and 1960s. It's only the energy that changes. Every now and then, someone like me comes along, and people say, 'Oh, this guy is this new thing.' But that's not so. There is no me without them. The tradition just goes on.

My personal style at this point in my life is more audio; it's more driven on less visual and more musicality. But because of my upbringing, my fabulous mentors and teachers that I've had throughout my dance journey or career, I also possess a style that is of the past. It was just a matter of me reaching back.

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.

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 don't have many actors in my family, but I do have a Great Uncle that is a film-maker in Philadelphia, and my great-great-grandparents were Flamenco dancers in the 30's in New York, they were Spanish dancers.

Ballet really lends itself to that because there's such a sense of ritual, with wrapping the shoes every day and preparing new shoes for every performance. It's such a process. It's almost religious, in nature.

What I'm trying to do is bring young people into doing tap so that the art form will keep going.

I come from a long line of people who express themselves through the dance. I come from a long line of people who create music through their feet.