PHOTO CREDIT: Above photo by John Rickman Photography, San Jose, California.

• Learning to Dance
• Specifically About Oriental Dance
• Dancing with Joy and Passion

• Performing Dance for Others
• Dancing Through Life
• About Middle Eastern Culture

Learning to dance is like learning a foreign language - you can't write poetry in that language until you know the vocabulary and grammar. In dance, technique is the vocabulary and grammar.

Shira

Dance is music made visible.

George Balanchine, on Sunday Morning CBS TV (May 23, 1993)

The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.

Martha Graham, New York Times (April 7, 1991)

Dancing appears glamorous, easy, delightful. But the path to paradise of the achievement is not easier than any other. There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep. There are times of complete frustration, there are daily small deaths.

Martha Graham

The choreographic process is exhausting. It happens on one's feet after hours of work, and the energy required is roughly the equivalent of writing a novel and winning a tennis match simultaneously.

Agnes de Mille, Dance to the Piper (1952)

The nature of my compulsion was such that I danced in my sleep. The entire household was sometimes awakened by loud thumping sounds coming from my room.

Gelsey Kirkland, Dancing on My Grave (1986)

To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. Your history is not your destiny.

Alan Cohen

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo of Shira by Pixie Vision, Glendale, California.

Good choreography fuses eye, ear, and mind.

Arlene Croce, Afterimages (1976)

It takes an athlete to dance, but an artist to be a dancer.

Shanna LaFleur

If you stumble, make it part of the dance.

Author Unknown

Dance is not an exercise. Dance is an art.

Alicia Alonso

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

Your face has to dance just as much as your body.

Maria Benítez

 

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A great belly dance teacher doesn't just teach you how to do her choreo. She teaches you how to create your own dance.

Shira

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo of Shira by Pixie Vision, Glendale, California.

The audiences' ears hear the music and their eyes see you being that music. Dance is the music made visible. You are the music!

Morocco, New York City, New York (1998)

A belly dancer has the ability to be an artist from the waist up, and an athlete from the waist down.

Shimmy TV, Vancouver, BC, Canada (posted to Twitter March 2008)

One thing is for sure — this dance is not an isolated act in itself. It comes from a country and a culture.

Nourhan Sharif (2012 via twitter)

Belly dancing with live music is like becoming a musician in the band. The dancer creates and shapes the music, not just follows it!

Lorna Gow (2013 via twitter)

Belly dancing: the internal massage to music!

Lorna Gow (2012 via twitter)

You don't need to make bellydance sexy. It is sexy by accident.

Ava Fleming

The image of Bellydance must stay a little bit naughty to the general public, because when it isn’t anymore, they’ll look for something else.

Bert Balladine

I am NOT a belly dancer. I have never been one, and never will be. What I do is not what Hollywood vulgarly calls "belly dance", but it's art. I have traveled the world to prove that my dance is not a dance of the belly but a refined, artistic dance full of tradition, of dreaming and beauty. Oriental dance is primarily an expressive dance; in that resides the beauty.

Nadia Gamal, in an interview with Scoop magazine, page 70.

PHOTO: Morocco, the author of one of the quotes.

Locked in this dance is a secret language that tells the story of women's lives: their passions and their spirituality, their sacrifices, their joys, their intuitions, their emotional life drama.

Delilah

Turkish dancers strut, Egyptian dancers glide.

Elizabeth Artemis Mourat, Silver Spring, Maryland (1998)

Dancing is like magic - it keeps women young.

Randa Kamel

Belly dance flaunts something in the face of a society that forbids public show of femaleness. Belly dance is a rebellion wrapped up in a flirtation.

A'isha Azar

In Egypt, the dance is not a machine, there isn't 1-2-3-4. If you lose the feeling and soul then you're not dancing, you are just replicating something.

Randa Kamel

When I danced, I felt I was entering the temple of Art.

Tahia Carioca, in a conversation with Edward Said

Oriental dance is, in essence, an art form in which the artist shares her emotional experience with her audience.

Hadia, in her January 4, 2013 blog

Do you know what happens when an Arabian woman dances? She does not dance: she protests, she loves, she cries, she makes love, she dreams, she goes away from her reality, to her own world, where love is really meant and she does not want to come back, because that is her reality.

Armand Nassery, writer and filmmaker

PHOTO: Artemis Mourat, the author of one of the quotes.

Belly dance is like glitter: It not only colors your life, it makes you sparkle. You find it everywhere, and in everything, and it's nearly impossible to get rid of.

Anonymous

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by Pixie Vision, Glendale, California.

A day I don't dance is a day I don't live.

Anonymous Tunisian dancer, quoted in Serpent of the Nile, page 196 (1989)

I used to think I lived for belly dance. Now I know it's when I am belly dancing that I am truly alive.

Lorna Gow (2012 via twitter)

There's something about belly dancing that makes my whole body happy!

Shira (2012)

♫♪♬ Dancers have music in their souls! ♫♪♬

Shira (2013)

When your life seems to be spinning out of control, you can either get sick from turning your stress inward, lash out at others, or dance. It's more fun to dance!

Shira (2013)

Dance is emotional expression. It doesn't always have to be happy-smiley. It just has to be authentic.

Shira

Dance is the hidden language of the soul.

Martha Graham, in "Martha Graham Reflects On Her Art and a Life In Dance," The New York Times (1985)

Instead of seeing the rug being pulled from under us, we can learn to dance on a flying carpet.

Shira (2013) (paraphrasing Thomas F. Crum's quote "Instead of seeing the rug being pulled from under us, we can learn to dance on a shifting carpet.")

PHOTO CREDIT: Kaylyn Hoskins, Solon, Iowa.

Dance is like love - when you dance it is the same like when you love!

Mona Said (she said it in a workshop attended by Hadia, Hadia later talked about it in her blog)

We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.

Japanese Proverb

Technique without passion is exercise.

Shanazel (December 2012, posted on the Oriental Dancer forum.)

Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground.

Martha Graham

Dancers are the messengers of the gods.

Martha Graham

Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery.

Martha Graham, in "Martha Graham Reflects On Her Art and a Life In Dance," The New York Times (1985)

Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.

Martha Graham, Blood Memory (1991)

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by Pixie Vision Productions, Glendale, California.

I danced with a passion to spite the music.

Gelsey Kirkland, Dancing on My Grave (1986)

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

Friedrich Nietzsche

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.

Friedrich Nietzsche

If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.

George Bernard Shaw

There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good.

Edward Denby, influential American dance critic

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Kurt Vonnegut

You've got to sing like you don't need the money, love like you'll never get hurt. You've got to dance like nobody's watching. It's got to come from the heart if you want it to work.

Richard Leigh and Susanna Clark (1987), lyric from the song "Come from the Heart"

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo of Shira by Lina Jang, New York City, New York.

If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance.

Anonymous

You turned my wailing into dancing; You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.

Psalm 30:11, The Bible (New International Version)

Let them praise His name with dancing; Let them sing praises to Him with timbrel and lyre.

Psalm 149:3, The Bible

Praise Him with timbrel and dancing, praise Him with the strings and pipe.

Psalm 150:4, The Bible (New International Version)

Then young women will dance and be glad, young men and old as well.

Jeremiah 31:13, The Bible (New International Version)

Dance is used as communication between body and soul, to express what is too deep to find for words.

Ruth St. Denis

If I can't dance, I don't want your revolution.

Emma Goldman

Dancing is like dreaming with your feet!

Constanze

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by Michael Baxter, Santa Clara, California.

Man learned to resort to the dance when he felt helpless or fragmentary, when he felt dislocated in his universe.

Mary Austin, The American Rhythm (1923)

My Art is just an effort to express the truth of my Being in gesture and movement. It has taken me long years to find even one absolutely true movement.

Isadora Duncan, My Life (1927)

Dancing with the feet is one thing, but dancing with the heart is another.

Author Unknown

Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance.

Oprah

Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.

Rumi

Fine dancing, I believe, like virtue, must be its own reward. Those who are standing by are usually thinking of something very different.

Jane Austen, Emma (1816)

Even the ears must dance.

Natalia Makarova, in Newsweek (1975)

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo of Shira by Pixie Vision, Glendale, California.

While I dance I cannot judge, I cannot hate, I cannot separate myself from life. I can only be joyful and whole.

Hans Bos

Dance is movement, and movement is life.

Author Unknown

I do not dance because I am happy, I am happy because I dance.

Author Unknown

Learning to walk sets you free. Learning to dance gives you the greatest freedom of all: to express with your whole self the person you are.

Melissa Hayden

I found that dance was key to keeping depression out of my life.

Patrick Swayze

When you dance, things just go away, things don't seem so bad.

Patrick Swayze

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo of Shira by Lina Jang, New York City, New York.

There's no better way to take care of health than through something as joyous and beautiful as dance.

Patrick Swayze

Dance expresses joy better than anything else.

Bob Fosse

La musique et la danse, c'est là tout ce qu'il faut. (Music and dance are all you need.)

Molière, in Le Bourgeois Gentillehomme

I'm dancing to the music of the madness inside me.

George C. Wolfe

Dance, my darling dance! If you dance then death can't catch you! Nothing bad can touch you! Dance!

Jackie French

The song and dance didn't stop us dying. It just stopped the fear of death swallowing us up while we were still alive.

Jackie French

Learn to dance, so the angels in heaven know what to do with you.

George Goetsch in Lob des Tanzes (1928)

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo of Shira by Pixie Vision, Glendale, California.

Dance is transformation of space, of time, of the people and the mass formed in community.

George Goetsch in Lob des Tanzes (1928)

I praise the dance, for it binds body, mind and soul together in man, it binds the isolated people to the community, it binds the community to space and time.

George Goetsch in Lob des Tanzes (1928)

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by Pixie Vision, Glendale, California.

In belly dance, the theatrical "fourth wall" does not exist. The audience expects the dancer to make eye contact and interact.

Shira

Today I shall dance as if this is the performance I will be remembered for.

Shira (2013) (paraphrasing Dr. Seuss; his original quote said, "Today I shall behave as if this is the day I will be remembered.")

Today I shall prepare as if tomorrow is the performance I will be remembered for.

Sedonia Sipes

Belly dance is the ultimate oxymoron: to perform well, you must offset extreme muscle control with freedom that only comes when you lose control.

Lorna Gow (2012 via twitter)

She must express life, death, happiness, sorrow, love and anger, but above all she must have dignity.

Tahia Carioca, when asked by an interviewer what qualities a good belly dancer should have. Quoted in the September/October 1971 issue of Aramco Magazine.

[They are] poets of gesture.

George Balanchine, regarding his dancers, Life (May 1984)

Someone once said that dancers work just as hard as policemen, always alert, always tense, but see, policemen don't have to be beautiful at the same time.

George Balanchine

PHOTO: Tahia Carioca, in a scene from the movie Shatie el Gharam.

In the end, it all comes down to the art of breathing.

Martha Graham, Guardian Weekly (April 14, 1991)

If I could have said it, I shouldn't have had to dance it.

Anna Pavlova, after being asked the meaning of one of the dances she performed

I have performed for thousands when they found me exotic, the vogue, daring, but I have danced, at any given time, for about ten people.... They were the ones that left the theater forever different from the way they were when they came in. All of my long, long life, I have danced for those ten.

Ruth St. Denis, in Elizabeth Anticaglia, Twelve American Women (1975)

We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.

Anonymous

Dancers are both athletes and artists.

Margot Fonteyn, A Dancer's World (1979)

Dance from your heart and love the music, and the audience will love you in return.

Maria

You can fool the eyes and minds of the audience, but you cannot fool their hearts.

Howard Thurston

PHOTO CREDIT: This photo of one of Shira's performances in Egypt was taken by Andre Elbing, Bärbroich, Germany.

The dance is over, the applause subsided but the joy and feeling will stay with you forever.

W. M. Tory

It is more important who they are as people and only then is it important who they are as dancers.

Marcia Haydee

They may not know what I'm doing, but they know I'm doing something!

Bob Fosse

When you watch a dancer, you should see his soul in his movement.

Gus Braun

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

The music is beauty for the ears, movement is beauty for the eyes.

Massimo Giorgianni

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo of Shira by Jeff Halpin.

We look musical,when we find the musicality in our movement.

Massimo Giorgianni

The why of movement, makes the how more significant.

Massimo Giorgianni

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by John Rickman Photography, San Jose, California.

You may be the only belly dancer someone encounters this week. Make sure they get the right impression!

Dilara Sultan (2011)

Working with belly dancers is like herding cats. Good thing I like cats.

Nilaja, Antioch, Illinois (2011)

A woman doesn't have anything to dance about until she's over 35 years old.

Bert Balladine, in a workshop (1987)

I will take my leave of you, but I will remember you always because you are the ones who encouraged me and lifted me up high. I will remember you forever, forever, even in the afterlife.

Samia Gamal

Sometimes it's blood memory... not the blood your mother and father gave you... but that which stretches back two or three thousand years.

Martha Graham, Blood Memory (1991)

I want one word on my tombstone— dancer.

Agnes de Mille, U.S. News & World Report (October 18, 1993)

Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.

Agnes de Mille, Dance in America, Station WNET Washington (May 8, 1987)

PHOTO CREDIT: Nilaja, the author of one of the quotes. Photo by David Gore, makeup by Azhia.

You can't lie when you dance. It's so direct. You do what is in you. You can't dance out of the side of your mouth.

Shirley MacLaine, in James Spada, Shirley and Warren (1985)

Dance is low on the totem pole of the arts, because you're not left with a painting... a book that will stay there, a score you can read.

Jerome Robbins, International Herald Tribune (December 28, 1992)

[Dance is] like life, it exists as you're flitting through it and when it's over it's gone.

Jerome Robbins, International Herald Tribune (December 28, 1992)

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Also, it's good to have more than one profession, in case your own profession goes out of style. A Wall Street trader who's also a belly dancer will do a lot better than a trader who winds up driving a taxi.

Nassim Taleb, a famous derivatives trader on Wall Street

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo of Shira by John Rickman Photography, San Jose, California.

Never trust a spiritual leader who cannot dance.

Mr. Miyagi, The Next Karate Kid, 1994

Some people march to the beat of a different drum — and some people polka.

Los Angeles Times Syndicate

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

Ted Shawn, Time (July 25, 1955)

Dance is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.

Havelock Ellis, The Dance Of Life

Don't walk - DANCE!

Author Unknown

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we should dance.

Author Unknown

Stifling an urge to dance is bad for your health - it rusts your spirit and your hips.

Terri Guillemets

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo of Shira by Kaylyn Hoskins, Solon, Iowa.

The trouble with nude dancing is that not everything stops when the music stops.

Robert Helpmann, regarding Broadway musical Oh Calcutta!, recalled upon his death (March 15, 1983)

Dance can give the inarticulate a voice.

Pamela Brown

I get up, I walk, I fall down. Meanwhile I keep on dancing.

Author Unknown

It's better to dance than to march through life.

Yoko Ono

All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.

Molière, in Le Bourgeois Gentillehomme

Sans la danse, un homme ne saurait rien faire. (Without dance, a man can do nothing.)

Molière, in Le Bourgeois Gentillehomme

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by Pixie Vision, Glendale, California.

Instead of seeing the rug being pulled from under us, we can learn to dance on a shifting carpet.

Thomas F. Crum

Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything dances.

Maya Angelou

Dance first, think later. It's the natural order.

Samuel Beckett

Death had ruled my life till I met Lady Dance. Her dance had set me free.

Jackie French

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world. (The original French: "Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde.")

Voltaire

Life is the dancer and you are the dance.

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by John Rickman Photography, San Jose, California.

Go where you are celebrated — not tolerated. If they can’t see the real value of you, it’s time for a new start.

Unknown

Dance is the only thing that lets you lose yourself and find yourself at the same time.

Pete Townsend

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo of Shira by Randolph Lynch, Redwood City, California.

Curves are everywhere in Eastern culture: our writing, our architecture, our instruments, the way we dance, even the tone of our language is curved. The West was built on angles. The East was built on curves.

Humans of New York

Temoot el raqassa we westaha beyel3ab. ("When the belly dancer dies, her hips are still moving." It means that habits stay with a person forever, similar to the English expression "A leopard doesn't change his spots.")

Egyptian Proverb

Life is like a ghaziya, she dances just briefly for each.

Egyptian Proverb

The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music.

Agnes de Mille, in The New York Times Magazine (1975)

Thanks to dance, I've stopped saying, "I can't do that," and started saying, "I will be able to do that, just give me some time to practice."

New York City Dance Alliance

If you can talk, you can sing. If you can walk, you can dance.

African Proverb

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo of Shira by Michael Baxter, Santa Clara, California.