Top 60 Ballroom Quotes

I feel as though I’m constantly defending myself. I’m up against challengers from the ballroom world, from the dance world, people on the couch who hate what I’m saying about their favourite celebrity. Then you’re up against the press, who will always want to put you in a box.

Both my brother and I have only had dance experience with ballroom dancing.

Learn at least two classic ballroom dances, at least one of them Latin.

Going to salsa clubs may be popular, but I feel we’re really missing something as a society by overlooking ballroom dancing. If only we could persuade schools to teach it or there was somewhere young people could go on a Saturday night to learn it.

My first week at ‘DWTS’ was amazing! I definitely fangirled when I walked into the ballroom because I looked at all the judges and where they were sitting, and I was like, ‘Wow, that’s the official judges’ table!’

When I was growing up, Asians weren’t known for dancing. I knew all my older aunts and uncles did, like, ballroom dancing and stuff. And then you saw all those dance crews, like Quest and Jabbawockeez, and now they’re, like, known for dance.

I went to four different proms in high school. I was addicted to the whole ballroom thing.

I was the kid who didn’t speak English, with a violin and ballroom dance shoes.

Blackpool is absolutely huge in Strictly but when you come from South Africa and you have your first impressions and you arrive in Blackpool, well it’s different. It’s different let’s put it that way. But what I’ll also say, if you walk into the ballroom it’s absolutely spectacular.

My mother witnessed the martyrdom of her husband, Hajj Malik Shabazz, Malcolm X, on Sunday, February 21, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. My older sisters, Attallah, Qubilah and I were seated with our mother up front and stage right.

There’s a lot of dancing in football. You can see Victor Cruz doing a little bit of a cha-cha or samba move in the end zone. You can see Terrell Owens getting his popcorn ready. You can see Ochocinco doing the riverdance. But not so much when it comes to ballroom.

I grew up dancing. When I was three years old, my mom would always watch Latin ballroom dancing competitions on PBS.

I’m a phys ed major: that’s ballroom dancing and handball.

I went to see some voguing ballrooms and krump battles, and I was hypnotized by their body language. These guys, who are usually very poor, become stars onstage once a month in a ballroom or in a battle.

I wrote… Neon Ballroom in that time where I hated music, really everything about it, I hated it.

I would love to do a little ballroom dancing with my husband… He and I can take a couple classes together. It would be a lot of fun!

When it came to the stylish and graceful art of ballroom dancing, my dad was a king of the clubs, a prowling tiger and a wonderfully natural mover.

I started out in the ballroom scene when I was fourteen years old.

Ballroom is a man’s world. It’s tough for women, particularly single women. But I’ve never expected life to be anything but tough.

Ballroom dancing is so specific… it’s so unique in its own way, that there’s not really a lot of outlets where you can utilize that.

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.

The real act of marriage takes place in the heart, not in the ballroom or church or synagogue. It’s a choice you make – not just on your wedding day, but over and over again – and that choice is reflected in the way you treat your husband or wife.

Astaire was ballroom, basically, and Gene Kelly had such athleticism – that’s always what I responded to and what just blew my head open when I watched Gene Kelly’s numbers. But, Fred Astaire was just so incredibly inventive and so, so smooth – so smooth.

My ballroom dancing skills are completely non-existent.

I’ve known Chicago for 50 years; we used to play shows at the Avalon Ballroom.

We used to play the Savoy Ballroom, and we always had a boogie tune in the set. Bands like Tommy Dorsey used to do a little boogie woogie. The big bands.

When you’re out dancing with your friends, you think you’re cool. But then you get in the ballroom, and it’s totally different.

Little did I know that there’s nothing more competitive in the world than a professional ballroom dancer. They are as competitive as Olympic athletes.

I love ballroom dance, my favorite style being the Argentine Tango.

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.

Strictly’ has evolved – there are such beautiful stories within each dance. We’re not doing a ballroom and Latin competition, it’s an entertainment show.

I’ve tried to make ‘Strictly Ballroom’ impossible to date. It does feel a bit ’80s but I consciously made sure there was no technology in the movie that could date it.

There’s so much you can say about the ballroom scene. But, simply, it’s just a way of life. It’s a place you can live out a fantasy you never lived before.

The first thing I ever did was play talent shows at the Uptown Theater and the Adelphi Ballroom.

Ballroom dancing is so articulate. Your hips have to be a certain way, legs have to be straight at one time and bent another.

I got involved in the underground world known as ballroom culture, and I used to walk a category called ‘face,’ and it was a very heavily Latino culture – it’s black and Latino – and they used to call me ‘cara,’ which means face in Spanish, so I started putting ‘cara’ on everything: hats, jackets.

I was completely with the reality TV boom for a while. I really liked a lot of the reality TV, and the one that lost me was the ballroom dancing one they do, ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ That was the one where I watched it and I was perplexed. I thought it was really boring.

I first met Miles Davis about 1947 and played a few jobs with him and Sonny Rollins at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. During this period, he was coming into his own, and I could see him extending the boundaries of jazz even further.

I was first introduced to dancing through the TV: I remember watching ballet, jazz and ballroom dancing when I was very little. But I felt no connection with it whatsoever: it was just like watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

I’m a little embarrassed to talk about it now, but the very first sport that I did, if you can call it sport, was ballroom dancing. I was aged seven to nine or 10.

The physical DNA has always been part of our family. My dad was a good boxer and gymnast; my mum is a ballroom dancer, and my brother does martial arts.

Strictly’ has changed everything for ballroom dancing.

I’m a bit of a traditionalist; the ballroom is all about tails and I never mess about with that. But for the Latin you can have a bit fun: tight trousers, gold shirt open to my waist, be a bit ridiculous.

Ballroom dancing is like being on Mars compared to what I’ve done throughout my life.

Growing up in the Soviet Union, ballroom dancing wasn’t the coolest thing to do. But that probably made me tougher, because it wasn’t an easy task to do ballroom dancing and not get bullied. And I never got bullied in my life, even though I changed to five secondary schools in three different countries.

I did ballroom dancing at school, but I was atrocious.

My parents used to go ballroom dancing in their latter years, and it gave them so much pleasure.

I know how to waltz because I used to teach ballroom dancing when I was in high school.

My old dance teacher, Jimmy Wilde, a former European ballroom dancing champion, was so sophisticated.

I was a go-go dancer at the Dom on East 10th Street in NYC. This was a glittering ballroom over Stanley’s Bar. 1965.

I started competing internationally when I was still in school. Every summer I would travel abroad to England because England was the place to be for ballroom dancing.

It’s a blessing that I have my family in my life and they were supportive, but there were times when I needed to find an outlet for me to understand my people and my own journey, and I found that through my chosen family, which was the ballroom community.

Yeah, I grew up doing ballet and jazz and tap, but I stopped at the age of 25, and I’ve never stepped foot in a ballroom.

Ballet is very stiff and I can do a triple timestep but who knows what I will be like at Ballroom or Latin.

I just found such a love for dancing. If anybody would love to just feel great, not just physically, but you want to feel such confidence, just go and take a ballroom dancing class! I love it more than any kind of workout.

I have so many ways I can explain the ballroom scene. But the essence of the ballroom scene would be elegance, extravagance, and fabulousness to its 100 per cent. It’s a place where you can be whoever you want to be inside of already being who you are.

Ballroom is its own entity, its own sport. And I have the most respect for what the pros do.