Top 215 Dancers Quotes

I’m so excited to be a judge on MTV’s ‘America’s Best Dance Crew.’ Dancing and performing is what I do and being a judge on this show will allow me to give creative feedback to the newest and hottest dancers on the rise.

I’m really grateful for my dancers’ discipline.

When you are part of a massive TV show like Strictly,’ it’s not just about the professional dancers and celebrities taking part, there could be young or old people out there who are watching and they might also be inspired to take up dancing, and I find that so special.

At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.

In Chicago, I walked in knowing what the dancers were going to need.

We got a gay following around the time we started using camp dancers who were stripped to the waist in cycling shorts and aviators.

My idea for the Jamison Project was rather like a pickup company. The idea was to give the dancers a taste of the menu. Today, dancers need to try as many companies as possible without having a drop-dead loyalty to me or anyone else. They like to have the leeway to go their own way.

I’ve always worked very hard. I think dancers always do.

The people that have inspired me the most were dancers and choreographers. Even growing up, if I dealt with any pressure to be a certain way, I knew that as an artistic lane, dancing was the one that was a little more freed up – like, no one in my family is really doing that; I can be that person.

I remember the first time I felt that I was sharing the stage with someone spectacular was dancing with Beyonce. It was the dancers, the band, Beyonce and me in front of thousands of people. That was sick. It was pretty amazing that I got to travel the world with someone like her.

I like Sam Smith and Taylor Swift. I love pop music, but I also like Sam Smith’s slow songs. That would be more to dance to. I think dancers like different genres of music, compared to just a regular person.

Every act I see, their whole act is choreographed. I’m sick of seeing these dancers. The only reason they have them is they don’t have enough talent to get people dancing themselves.

I sew my own shoes. Other male dancers don’t, but I like it one way, and I’ve learned to do it that way.

Most dancers are very quiet.

The highest heels I do are six-inch heels – but mostly only dancers can wear them, since they are used to being on point in ballet shoes. Their feet are arched.

Many dancers are content with the repertoire they’re given. Others are dissatisfied but don’t know why. Then there are a few like me that are curious and grab at everything. Can that curiosity thrive in the ballet world, or should it exist elsewhere? That’s the eternal question.

I don’t think it’s about playing and singing, to be honest. That seems like old news, you know? I wasn’t thinking about that. I just think that’s in my body now. Dancers don’t think about their legs moving one way and their arms moving another. Over time, you incorporate that into your instrument.

I have a lot of relatives that were dancers and musicians and artists. They basically came out of the womb doing it.

You hang around actors, or dancers, the minute you sneeze, everybody has a remedy, and we’re all on a million different kinds of diets, and different kinds of things that we do for exercise.

Professional dancers are known for their barely-there costumes.

From 1961 to 1964, I was fortunate enough to work at a think tank in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago. As a writer and editor, I reported in a publication about the thinkers. Our offices were in a former mansion; I worked in what had been the ballroom. As I sat typing my copy, I imagined the dancers waltzing.

In Hindi cinema, the cabaret dancers were eased out when the heroines imbibed their mannerisms. This could happen in Malayalam cinema too.

My dad photographed a lot of beautiful dancers. My mom was a dancer.

I was on Kanye’s Yeezus tour as a dancer, but really, I was a Vanessa Beecroft model. I was one of the three ‘dancers’ who couldn’t dance and was more of an accessory than an individual. Vanessa was pretty involved. Her style is about a lot of standing. It’s very simple but haunting.

When I was 12, I was doing competitive jazz, tap and ballet in Michigan. The studio put the best dancers together, and I joined that. We always did really, really well in local competitions.

Dancers can get to see almost everything now. When I used to go into companies to make a piece, the dancers had hardly ever seen my work. Now they can watch it on YouTube. It means they’re much faster at picking up material.

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

I have done research about people who think they’re doing movements and people – like Madonna and professional dancers – who are actually ‘performing’ movements. The people who can connect and perform during their workout get results way above and beyond the people who are just going through the motions.

I want to take this art form to a whole new level in India so that kids say that they want to become dancers when they grow up.

I always want to have more dancers in my company.

Chorus Line’ opened things up a bit. Any show that’s successful does that. But ‘Chorus Line’ was about dancers.

Fonteyn was our first proper British ballerina, and from the moment I started dancing, her image engulfed me. In my first year at the Royal Ballet School, Margot’s statue was outside my dormitory. Like generations of budding ballet dancers before me, I used to touch her middle finger for luck.

I like dancers who demand of themselves to achieve, not just technically but also as performers.

If I can play one note and make you cry, then that’s better than those fancy dancers playing twenty notes.

For ‘Chicago,’ the dancers need to demonstrate an affinity for the Fosse style. Sometimes dancers come in with brilliant technique, but if the Fosse style isn’t easy for them, or it’s awkward for them, they won’t be right for this show.

I like dancers. I have a thing for girls who dance.

I follow dancers like Jennifer Lopez and Beyonce, as they are in my zone, but when it comes to Indian dancing, I am a huge Madhuri Dixit fan.

I would do musicals in high school where there was dancing, and I would sing my verse, and then they would choreograph it so when I would take an eight-count to back up to the back of the stage while the other dancers covered me up because my body was totally… I was always in newborn-deer mode.

I was one of the assistant dancers of ‘Race’ 10 years ago, and now I am one of the lead actors of ‘Race 3,’ where I have got a chance to share screen space with some of the legends of our country like Anil Kapoor and Salman Khan. I am overwhelmed.

I’m a really artistic person, and so, with the live stuff, there’s a lot that I think is really cool. Beyonce and Rihanna have all these dancers. So with the live costumes and video costumes, I’d really like to have my vision. The way that I want people to dress is very specific. I love fashion.

I’m not a musician, I can’t read music, but I came from a family of music fans. Not mad music fans, but people who like music. Both of my parents can play the piano. They were very good dancers, which I am not.

My parents were opera singers and voice teachers, so growing up, I admired musicians and dancers.

For ballet dancers, style is about melding personal expression with physical form.

We put too much on contemporary dancers. A lot of them cannot change styles; a lot of them can’t do anything else other than run around the stage reaching and stretching in anguish to somebody off camera that I never understand who it is. But it’s the teenage angst they have to live with.

I find that dancers are only well trained in ballet these days.

My wife Juliana and I first saw Eurovision while on our honeymoon in Greece in 2006, and we were amazed by it. They basically recreate a music video onstage, and pyro cannons, LED video screens, background dancers, fireworks, costume changes, and wind machines are their tools.

I’m pretty gutsy. Dancers don’t think about things; they just do them.

Ballet dancers really know how to enter a room.

There’s an innate feeling when I choreograph in juxtaposition to how I feel as a dancer. When I choreograph, I never really look into the mirror. But as dancers, we always check ourselves in the mirror. I do feel that when I choreograph, I am making a dance on my own body. Much of it is my own response to the music.

In London, I live with one of the other ‘Strictly’ dancers, Amy Dowden. She got me a chocolate advent calendar and I had no idea what it was. I’d never seen one before!

When I first moved to New York, I was friends with a lot of dancers – people from Merce Cunningham’s company and things like that.

It’s going to take a while before we see a real shift in the students and the dancers that are going into professional companies because it takes so many years of training, but I do think that there’s a new crop of dancers, of minority dancers that are entering into the ballet world.

We always have a really bad dancer on ‘Strictly,’ like Kate Garraway or Fiona Phillips, and that’s great, and we love it, but when it comes to the quarters and semis, you want the best dancers left in.

I started salsa dancing with a few different companies and started touring the country. It was fantastic, but I realized that I really wanted to talk every time we were performing. That’s a problem because when you’re dancing, if you stop to talk, that’s not really cool to the other dancers.

So many dancers paint. I used to paint. I started again recently. While I was dancing, I was very busy with my career. Start something else that makes use of your creative ability because if you don’t you will die inside as a person.

Backup dancers are completely respectable. They’re the studio musicians of dance.

For an actor, one doesn’t have to be a dancer. But because our Hindi movies have so many song and dance sequences, it is preferred if they are good dancers. It’s always advantageous to know dance. But if you don’t, it’s okay.

I was one of those dancers who they say wants to feel the floor through their pointe shoes. I would end up not wearing toe pads and that stuff. I would just wrap minimal amounts of paper towels around my toes.

Dancers, like all performing artists, like nothing better than to be challenged.

When I started off with ‘Dance India Dance,’ even the TV show people thought it won’t be accepted. But with the talent that the show received, I was able to personally tutor dancers to amalgamate contemporary dance moves on Bollywood tracks.

I was using tape loops for dancers and dance production. I had very funky primitive equipment, in fact technology wasn’t very good no matter how much money you had.

My parents were both in show business. My father was an actor, my mom an actress, and both singers, dancers and actors. They met in Los Angeles doing a play together and so I grew up in a show biz family.

Ideally if I settled down with a wife I would love to form my own troupe of mini dancers!

I wanna get backup singers, but I don’t think I will ever get backup dancers.

With my work, it’s not possible to just cast a production and leave it. I have to nurture the group of dancers to make it happen.

Most men, even egotistic actors, always shy away from dancing with me. Other dancers report the same trouble. They probably figure that I would be mentally comparing them with Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly. So I go to parties and usually just sit – unless George Burns is there – and then I have a ball.

I’ve had a lot of little girls write to me saying that they want to be dancers and that I’ve inspired them.

There are a lot of artists that I love, and I think they’re really talented, and they’re good dancers as well. I’ve always wished that I could combine that.

I know certain pro dancers would like to dance with a woman because that is what tradition is, and it kind of makes sense but it is very much down to someone’s personal opinion of what Ballroom and Latin dancing actually is.

For 20 years, I’ve been running an institute in Chennai where serious dancers from Kerala come with aspirations of becoming professional dancers.

Unless the clients want, I don’t like to have dancers for my shows. I prefer a rock show look and like performing with a live band.

Ballet is a healthy world despite what people might think. There’s a perception that ballet dancers are skinny and unhealthy, but that’s rubbish. You have to be strong, so eating regularly and healthily is essential.

Coming out in a bedazzled tank top and silver jeans and singing ‘Superstar’ with a 36-piece band and 28 dancers around me is one of the dopest things I’ve ever had the opportunity to do.

Dancers are working their bodies just like a marathon runner would, and you have to eat to make it through a three-hour performance. Dancers put their bodies through incredible strain.

Don’t get me wrong: I love a massive show with dancers and the works, and I love Zumba! But I just want there to be more people who just sing.

Do I watch dancers as people? Yes, absolutely. Do I watch really good dancers for specifically who they are? Absolutely, because how they move best and how they look best is going to be most familiar to them, and not necessarily to me.

It’s expensive to get studio space and dancers. My whole first three years, I was sneaking around in the studios and getting kicked out of them. It was kind of depressing.

The great thing about being the son of Maya Angelou is that I had the good fortune to grow up around some of the greatest black artists, dancers, singers, musicians, and actors of our time.

‘ABCD’ is an out-and-out dance film. I also dance in the film. I must say you would see better dancers than me in this film. It was very tough for me to match their steps.

Most dancers have a young body. This is part discipline and part desire, because just sitting around makes one feel sluggish.

Being in the wardrobe department meant me and a few other girls dressed the dancers during the show when they had quick changes. Thirty seconds to totally dress a sweaty dancer can be insane and provoke mucho anxiety. Doing this night after night was pretty cray, but I loved every minute of it.

‘Eclipse’ is a concept piece, and its concept centers on 36 large light bulbs strung from above in a geometrical pattern and at different heights, some of them at times down below the dancers’ chest level.

Somewhere along the line, a concert became a variety show. It was no longer enough for four dudes to play together in front of some guitar amps. Costume changes, an army of dancers, and Broadway theatrics suddenly became standard for a ‘concert.’

Those 25 dancers we worked with for a day, in as highly productive a way as possible – a long class, a period of teaching bits of the repertory – in fact I didn’t teach Bank, I’ve used parts of Oil and Water.

I don’t like teaching, because it’s so repetitive – especially the beginning of class, which is always more or less the same and has to be carefully done. It’s tedious. But I know it’s necessary for dancers to keep working on technique.

I got extremely fit and slim on ‘Strictly,’ but I did find that, each week, a different part of my body hurt. It really makes you realise the hard work dancers have to put in and how fit they have to be.

How can you live the high life if you do not wear high heels? I don’t understand why women wear these ballet pumps. They are only good if you walk like a ballet dancer, and only ballet dancers do that.

When I first moved to New York, I wanted to be a dancer. I danced professionally for years, living a hand-to-mouth existence. I never tapped into nightlife; all I knew was dancers. We went to bed early and got up early and went to free concerts at the Lincoln Center and Shakespeare in the Park.

There are two ways of being creative. One can sing and dance. Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers flourish.

Same with anyone who’s been flying for years and loves it still… we’re part of a world we deeply love. Just as musicians feel about scores and melodies, dancers about the steps and flow of music, so we’re one with the principle of flight, the magic of being aloft in the wind!

‘Empty Moves’ is elegantly and coolly inventive. Two pairs of dancers shadow each other in slow, deliberate rearrangements and manipulations of legs and torsos, only occasionally switching partners or breaking free of the formal patterning.

The human voice deployed to recite the Vedas and later aid the temple dancers was paramount before any instruments emerged.

I was seventeen when I moved to New York. I was nineteen when I joined the main company. I was going through a lot. Just becoming an adult and just wanting to fit in, be accepted, and be in common with the other dancers.

That’s a traditional Samoan dance. I was lucky that I was able to fly my cousins, who are professional dancers, up from Hawaii and they were able to be in the movie with me. We had a great time.

If I had to reflect on the finest classical male ballet dancers of my time, Vladimir Vasiliev of the Bolshoi and the Danish dancer Eric Bruhn were, I feel, without peer.

There’s something refreshing about going to work with a different group of dancers. There are different ways of moving, different ways in which the institution functions. There’s a contrast from place to place, so the variety and the experience of working in a different place feeds me.

Dancers are made, not born.

Music videos are notoriously long, not fun, grueling. You are known there as a dancer and it’s kind of sad because dancers, in a lot of ways, are under-appreciated and kind of under-respected when it come to that so they don’t necessarily treat you in a nice way when you do a music video.

I’m in show business, and we have a long history here of making movies about law enforcement officers. If you’re my age, and you’re male, and you’re trying to get work, you’re going to run into those roles as opposed to having a long run of playing dancers.

Dancers are always striving for perfection. A great dancer never achieves it: you always want to do another turn, a higher jump,a more difficult acrobatic jump.

That is perceptive of you, because in this country men dancers have always been viewed with suspicion. If you were an actor, a star, and a dancer, you had to be, or have a name like someone ‘mainstream.’

You always want to please your choreographer, director. Dancers are just that way.

Some people are painters, and some are ballet dancers, and I’m a writer.

I want to create a platform where dancers can be creative away from their day jobs. I want them to be able to express their joy, their personalities and to have fun.

I do drag. Just because my drag is not the drag of Creme Fatale or Holy McGrail doesn’t mean it’s less drag. I perform live; I just sing with dancers. It’s drag on a different level.

I think as a dancer you are always wanting to look your best, like in an outfit, you want an outfit to look the best it can on you, meaning weight is a huge one for a lot of dancers… you are always wanting to look better, look thinner.

Obviously, the young dancers lack a certain air of maturity.

I look for dancers who have all the technique in the world. But they must be dancers who are open-minded, who are willing to forget that they know anything. They also have to be gorgeous; they must have a clear image of themselves and strong personalities.

For the ‘Heaven’ stage, the dancers and I don’t use wires so we are slowly slipping down the stage if you see us up close.

I was always the kid down the street who got the other kids to put on a show. But it was only when I was 19, and discovered ballet and contemporary dance, that I got interested in the fact that you could have a whole evening of dance – rather than just waiting for the dancers in a musical.

Choreography is mentally draining, but there’s a pleasure in getting into the studio with the dancers and the music.

When I dance, I love the romance and sexiness of it, and love having it be clear to both dancers that the man leads! But the man has to know what he’s doing!

I would love for dancers to be treated better and for dancers to have support, for dancers to have managers, agents. This is the only art form that does not have a proper support system.

When I graduated from high school, I made the decision to pursue my dance training in London, England. I was so scared at first, not knowing if this little girl from small town Canada could possibly make it with these highly trained London dancers.

The highest heels I do are six-inch heels – but mostly only dancers can wear them, since they are used to being on point in ballet shoes.

I very much like dance and dancers.

Listen – I like musicals. Even when they’re bad, there’s a couple of dancers I can watch.

For me rappers and dancers are poets and artists and often times the most interesting performances are given by them.

I really enjoyed watching a ballerina named Denise Dabrowski who used to dance at California Ballet. She was a beautiful ballerina and role model for a lot of young dancers.

One of our problems is our sense of discipline – dancers have an extraordinary sense of self-discipline.

Show dancing stood very well on its own a long time ago with dancers like Bill Robinson and Marilyn Miller.

Dancers use their bodies in extraordinary ways, so we are chronically pre-arthritic, because of how we use our muscles and our bones.

Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times.

When I coach dancers, I always like to get on the dance floor with them or describe something by showing them.

My dancers expect me to deliver because my choreography represents their livelihood.

I think it’s always great to not be the smartest person in the room because I don’t want to ever feel like I can’t improve upon what I’m doing. I just want to surround myself with people that are better actors than me and better singers and dancers and see what happens.

I feel an obligation to use black dancers because there must be more opportunities for them, but not because I’m a black choreographer talking to black people.

I come from a family with many dancers, my aunts learnt dance, so did Kamal Haasan and, as a child I learnt it, too.

I’m the chairman of the board of the Actor’s Fund. It’s an incredible organization. It helps anybody that has made their living in the performing arts and entertainment: actors, singers, dancers, film producers, agents, managers, ticket takers, writers, anybody in times of need or crisis.

As a dancer, you really try to stay true to whatever the choreographer/artistic director is giving you. So, now the shoe is on the other foot and I have to trust everyone else – I have to trust the dancer. As I was trusted as a dancer, I trust my dancers.

There’s a line of dancers waiting to get into Sydney Dance Company.

The Kirov is a great ballet company because it has so many terrific dancers, but it doesn’t always know what to do with them.

I love the dancers in the Bolshoi, but all of my Moscow friends are outside the company. A friend introduced me to Vika Gazinskaya, a well-known Russian designer. I met her group. The rest is history.

I see myself helping the next generation of dancers who come along, helping them to keep the dance focused, so we don’t get into a position where they’re saying in 2050, or whatever, that around 2001 or 2002 or something the dance died.

When you find real jazz on the radio dial, it comes in all static-y. It’s just like tap dancers. You have to go uptown to find the real hoofers. We only come to midtown if we’re called upon.

When I went to the sets of ‘ABCD,’ I felt younger. Surrounded by so many young dancers, I, too, became a dancer again.

There are always younger and better dancers fighting to get your place. You get worn down by the fight to try to stay at the top.

The Royal Ballet is the best paid company, but the dancers get nothing. The stage crew get paid three times more than the dancers, and they have a job for life – dancers only have 10 years.

It was extraordinary ’cause I was 17 years old when I first danced with Edward Villella. And we were both young. But I had seen him dance, and he was already a star. So he was just so gentle and wonderful and kind, and we had a great rapport together. He was one of the most exciting dancers of our day.

Even in the early stages of my career I’ve had to dance with principal dancers. I could have easily freaked out and got nervous, but I think that helped when it came to trying to forget I was doing a scene with Judi Dench.

I realize that dancers have worked long and hard for standards. However, on occasion, I think that it’s good to examine one’s heart and ask why are we dancing.

I like to be around dancers who are totally committed to the art form, totally committed to the men and women around them.

I thought the musical aspect of ‘Freak Dance’ was a good contrast to how dancers always try to come off as really tough in those movies – they’re trying to literally come off as gangs like as if the Crips and the Bloods are also dancing in addition or instead of fighting with guns and knives and stuff.

Dancers carry themselves in completely different ways to how we do in our everyday lives. They are very free with their bodies which I’m not used too.

It’s time for there to be roles in the ballet where two men can fall in love, and a woman can lead a company of 20 dancers that include both men and women.

Bubbles was a very good dancer. Tremendous dancer. He was one of our leading dancers of the country at that time. And, of course, he didn’t have much of a voice.

Dancers know how to move their arms and their hands. But I don’t know the first thing about how to move my arms and hands gracefully.

I look at the dancers and I get the inspiration for the work from them.

I grew up in a crazy, gypsy-like household of actors, dancers and loony Broadway people. It was their way of life, and I didn’t know anything else.

Usually, when we’re performing ‘What About Your Friends’ or ‘Waterfalls’ comes on, they all know the dance. It’s like a sea of TLC dancers in the audience! It’s so beautiful to see. I just love it so much.

It’s normal; Arab women have always been very active at the forefront of culture – as film producers since the 1920s; as singers, dancers, choreographers, writers for much longer than that.

I have two sisters and neither one of them are dancers.

It’s not a secret – I’m literally one of the best dancers in the world! I mean, not everyone would necessarily agree with that.

I was always looking at footage of dancers from Nicholas Brothers to Ralph Brown to Sand Man to Miller Brothers and Lois, and I grew up looking at old footage.

Sometimes learning simple little steps kind of gives couples a pattern that they can follow, and they feel a bit more confident. I literally melt every time I help a couple with their first dance, and they’re not dancers.

I’m obviously always interested in the dancer who’s an athlete and vice versa. I expect dancers to be in condition like an athlete is and to challenge themselves in the same way, to the same physical degree.

I would have young dancers come to me and ask me questions and want to know what my experiences were like: ‘What’s it like being a black dancer?’ So I just felt like it was necessary for me to share my experiences with them.

When other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers I kind of wanted to be a vampire.

There’s no agents or managers to represent them. Dancers don’t have any voice. They have nothing. Nobody can afford a flat to live in. They have to share to be able to survive. In a place like the Royal Ballet, that shouldn’t happen.

I used to rely too much on arrangements and production, things like dancers and explosions.

I still can’t believe I danced with Gene Kelly. How lucky am I that I’ve been in movies where I’ve danced with two of the greatest dancers of all time – with Gene Kelly and John Travolta.

I would love to do a live show with dancers and fashion and scenic elements – definitely bring my love of the theater to a concert-style performance.

Shashi Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan were good dancers.

I don’t just work with these kids to make them good tumblers or good dancers. I’m working with them to make them good citizens – to become taxpayers, not tax-eaters. I teach them to say please and thank you. I show them how to use a knife and fork and how to fold a napkin.

Dancers are a work of art – they are the canvas on which their work is painted.

Duffy is go hard or go home. It’s just a concept that I wanted to have when we’re doing different things. When me and my dancers go in, we usually go hard or we go home. We’re not here to play. We go duffy.

You see, dancers are quite mature people because they start performing so early. They become professionals when they start to take everyday classes.

Yes, bad or mediocre ballets can be useful to the dancers and temporarily fun for the audience, but in the long run, the lowering of standards can only erode the art form we all love.

I wouldn’t say that I am one of the greatest dancers, but I am really quite good at what I do.

In those days, male dancers were a rarer breed than women. as they are still today, A good male dancer, one as strong as we were, was very difficult to come by if you couldn’t afford to pay them.

I had danced with Janet Jackson and P. Diddy so I had done a bunch of hip hop. Really and truly my roots are in modern and ballet but, professionally, that’s not really out there any more, unfortunately, so these artists aren’t really having a lot of ballet dancers behind them so I had to learn hip hop really quick.

I would definitely want kids. Would they be dancers? I dunno. That’s up to them. If they show interest, I will push them do the best. I was not brought up in a dancer’s family. I was brought up in a family where the mentality was whatever you do, you gotta try to be the best at it.

At intervals between the songs, more especially after the trances have begun, the dancers unclasp hands and sit down to smoke or talk for a few minutes.

It’s great that ballroom dancing is being recognised. For many years ballroom dancers were misunderstood and other dance forms didn’t want anything to do with us.

All kids, when they go to school, are pretty good artists and dancers and singers and poets. All that gets buried, basically through being educated, or brainwashed.

Actors are born, good actors are trained. Dancers are born, good dancers are trained.

I am into belly dancing. I used to only hang with comics. Now I have friends who are dancers, and my whole house has a harem feel.

I haven’t had a family, but I don’t think of that as a sacrifice: my dancers are my family.

Tap dancers find it very difficult to do anything other than tap if that is all they have been trained in because, again, it’s a whole different ballgame that you’re constantly working on – bent legs, loose ankles – which you cannot afford to do when you’re doing jumps or anything else.

My sisters and my brother were all very much into music. A couple of them were dancers.

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.

I’m very close to a lot of people from my time in the band, like our hair and make-up people and the dancers, but you gravitate towards the people that you have stuff in common with.

Yes, I love going to fittings and talking about the history of a costume. For ‘Versailles,’ a play set in 1919, the costume designer told me that pocket squares had just been introduced. The tango was becoming fashionable in London, and dancers used them to mop their brows. I love to learn fascinating stuff like that.

Latino patriots have served and fought in every war. They are artists, dancers, singers, poets and journalists, teachers and scientists. More and more Latinos are becoming entrepreneurs and businesspeople, contributing to the wealth and economic well-being of the nation.

All of my friends are really good dancers, which was initially why I never danced – we’d go out, and they would kill it, and I’d be like, ‘Yeah, I’m just gonna sit at the bar.’

Like dancers with choreography or actors with scripts, jazz singers could take material that was known, even loved, then risk interpreting and revising it. They could conceal even as they revealed themselves. Inflection, timing and tonality were their language, at least as much as words.

It’s important to get well-rounded right off the bat. A lot of experienced dancers can get pigeonholed into one thing. I’ve been hired for a lot of different gigs simply because I can do a lot of different things with different levels of dancers. And it’s sad to me that some dancers don’t do more.

There were ten dancers – four guys and six girls – including me, on the Beyonce tour. Sometimes we would go out with her, to events. She was really normal – just like everybody else!

I know that a large part of my fan base is gay. They’ve shown me love from the start. I mean in this industry, everyone from my glam people to my dancers are gay. You can’t be homophobic in this line of work – I’m a pop star!

Dancers are kept in a perpetual state of pre-puberty, and for young girls in particular, that type of pressure breeds insecurities.

I went to a public high school and most of the comedy was coming from the black kids and the Asian kids and the Hispanic kids. And, the coolest kids to me where always the black kids. They were always fashion forward and they always dressed the coolest. They were always the best dancers, and just the coolest people.

I say over and over again that I am just standing on the shoulders of so many who have set this path for me, and they may not be seen or recognized or have been given an opportunity to have a voice, but I’m here representing all of those dancers. Dance Theatre of Harlem Virginia Johnson, Tai Jimenez, Lauren Anderson.

I’ve always been a bit of an orphan, because actors say, ‘Well, he’s more of a dancer.’ And dancers say, ‘No. He’s really a singer.’ And singers say, ‘No. He’s an actor.’

Both my brother and mother are actors and dancers. Of course my mom, who is a Kathak exponent, is the most established dancer amongst the three of us.

Initially, dancing for me was just for pocket money. The dancers are paid well and you get paid on a daily basis. Eventually when I got promoted as an assistant choreographer I was getting paid more. This was during my college days.

I like to express myself inside of the work that is given, and I let the dancers do the same.

I love writing for dancers. You don’t have to worry about the lyrics. I think to write words without music must be so frustrating. It must be always be so good, so perfect.

The Carnival dancers are such a vital part of any carnival, whether it’s in Rio, Mardi Gras or even Notting Hill Carnival in my home town of London. Once you see them, you know it’s time to party.

Well, I swim quite a bit, and ride horseback. That’s supposed to be bad for dancers, but I don’t care – I like it. And then I collect dolls. I have them from lots of foreign countries.

My brother had a house in Paris. To it came many Western classical musicians. These musicians all made the same point: ‘Indian music,’ they said, ‘is beautiful when we hear it with the dancers. On its own, it is repetitious and monotonous.’

Young dancers are training at a very vulnerable time in their lives, through adolescence, and while they are trying to work out who they are as people, never mind as a dancer. So train the whole person, not just the dancer.

I sent 200, 300 of the clothes that I had made, and the dancers chose what they liked.

When I’m making a new ballet, I usually read through the score a little bit, and then I have to go back and translate or transcribe all the counts for dancers because the way that you hear it is completely different from the way the musicians read and play it.

God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it – from what I see, from what the dancers can do, from what others do.

Ballet Hispanico is far from Irish, and, though it has strong dancers, its Spanishness has always left me unconvinced.

I don’t ever use dancers, and when I do, it’s literally, like, four break dancers.

Dancehall has always had a homophobic problem, but you go to dance parties in Jamaica, and some of the biggest dancers are kinda gay, just not outspoken about it. Dancehall was the first kind of music I was DJing, and it was always more about the rhythm.

Compared to professional dancers, I’m obviously not professional but I do love to dance so much.

I don’t date dancers, but I’ve always wanted to teach guys how to dance.

I love the noise of my wooden clogs on my wooden floor. Dancers wear clogs. They’re good for you.

I still go on YouTube and watch the old performances and the ‘Soul Train’ lines. I’m still amazed by how much soul and funk the music and dancers had.

The ‘All My Children’ studio was near Lincoln Center, and I used to see all the ballerinas and the dancers, and I thought, I don’t want to bulk up; I want to have long, lean, toned muscles. And I found out that through Pilates, you can achieve those strong, lean dancer muscles.

A producer wouldn’t think of making a film about ballet dancers without using real dancers, but they will cast actors who have never held a bat in baseball films.

On a TV show, for instance, dancers have to be paid for a week and a half rehearsal time. So unless they’re vital to a production, they’re just not used.

Ballet needs figures that people can recognize and relate to. People don’t know ballet dancers as well as they know other artists.