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date: 04 December 2023

Dance 

  1. Heaven—I'm in Heaven—And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak;
    And I seem to find the happiness I seek
    When we're out together dancing cheek-to-cheek.
     
    Irving Berlin 1888–1989 American songwriter: ‘Cheek-to-Cheek’ (1935 song) in Top Hat
  2. There may be trouble ahead,
    But while there's moonlight and music and love and romance,
    Let's face the music and dance.
     
    Irving Berlin 1888–1989 American songwriter: ‘Let's Face the Music and Dance’ (1936 song) in Follow the Fleet
  3. On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
    No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
    To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet.
     
    Lord Byron 1788–1824 English poet: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812–18) canto 3, st. 22
  4. Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
     
    Lewis Carroll 1832–98 English writer and logician: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) ch. 10
  5. The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
    Agnes de Mille 1908–93 American dancer and choreographer: in New York Times Magazine 11 May 1975
  6. Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
    Martha Graham 1894–1991 American dancer, teacher, and choreographer: Blood Memory (1991)
  7. Dancing appears glamorous, easy, delightful. But the path to the paradise of achievement is not easier than any other. There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep.
    Martha Graham 1894–1991 American dancer, teacher, and choreographer: Blood Memory (1991)
  8. Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
    And Laughter holding both his sides.
    Come, and trip it as ye go
    On the light fantastic toe.
     
    John Milton 1608–74 English poet: ‘L'Allegro’ (1645) l. 33
  9. I wish I could shimmy like my sister Kate,
    She shivers like the jelly on a plate.
     
    Armand J. Piron 1888–1943 American jazz musician: ‘Shimmy like Kate’ (1919 song)
  10. [Dancing is] a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
    George Bernard Shaw 1856–1950 Irish dramatist: in New Statesman 23 March 1962
  11. Let us read, and let us dance—two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.
    Voltaire 1694–1778 French writer and philosopher: Dictionnaire philosophique (1764) ‘Liberty of the Press’
  12. O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
    How can we know the dancer from the dance?
     
    W. B. Yeats 1865–1939 Irish poet: ‘Among School Children’ (1928)