Forced Performance Quotes

His dagger was out, poised at her throat. “Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life.

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.

I think it would be worse to get mauled by a dancing bear than just a regular bear because you can't totally blame the dancing bear.

My mum and dad used to make me stand up at dinner parties and sing to their friends.

The only time I feel pressured is when some woman's husband comes over and says, "Will you go ask my wife to dance? She's a great dancer and would just love to dance with you."Suddenly there's a crowd of people standing around us and they expect that they're about to see Fred and Ginger. Here the woman and I have just met, and these people think that it's showtime. That is the only time I think it is really embarrassing.

When I started to sing, my mother would have me engaged to perform at the Women's Christian Temperance Union national or annual meetings. I would hate doing this because I wanted to play baseball or go off skiing.

My first performance was in AP Calculus when they forced me up into the front of the classroom and made me sing a song, which was really scary, but it was fun.

Or if I have my head in the results, I can't work with what I have, because I'm trying to force something to happen. And with singing, any time you force it, you tighten up. If you tighten up, you're screwed, nothing will work.

Being over-rehearsed is very bad. It is stilted. The public see that.

If you were a child and every time your relatives had a few drinks, they'd be running after you with scary faces and big hands to pull you back to sing Don't Cry For Me Argentina, you wouldn't like singing either.

For what the horse does under compulsion, as Simon also observes, is done without understanding; and there is no beauty in it either, any more than if one should whip and spur a dancer.

When I was young, we had these parties, and they'd make me sing in front of the family all the time.

It was always acting, singing and dancing that I loved. Not the horror of performing on the piano in front of an assembled audience of quiet people. I'd forget the piece just before I went out to do the concerto, the panic was too great . This was not anything that gave me pleasure. This was fulfilling somebody else's dream.

I don't think there's anything more scary than being forced into doing stand-up comedy.

You can't just expect anyone to turn comedian because it's something that should come naturally, but not when forced on someone.

My mother was the worst kind of stage mother. She would make me and my younger sister and brother little duckling costumes and put us in kiddie shows.

'Boom Bang a Bang' was a huge part of me, maybe a part that I didn't relish, and there might be psychological reasons for that - I was a child being made to do things I didn't want to do. I was perhaps an elitist, a bit of a snob.

Since the days of slavery, if you were a good singer or dancer, it was your job to perform for the master after dinner.

I'd say a lot of black comics were forced to do the black comedy circuit. I'd go into black comedy clubs and see what they're going through, which is different because they're almost made to be in another world.

Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualification.

I guess I've just gotten to the point where I don't want to be bored by the characters that I play, and I don't want to feel like I'm having to make something more interesting or I'm having to force something that's not really there on the page.

I couldn't think of anything worse than hating your own music and having to play it every night. It would be a nightmare.

I always told myself I'd never be like my mother if I had a kid, but here I am, the same thing. I don't know how this happened. The same type of disciplining, the same kind of forcing him to perform in front of people, not buying him things when I could afford whatever he wanted - it's crazy!

I never witness a performance of child-acrobats, or the exhibition of any forced talent, physical or mental, on the part of children, without protesting, at least in my own mind, against the blindness and cruelty of their parents or guardians or whoever has care of them.