In Zygmunt Gloger’s Encyklopedia staropolska (Encyclopaedia of Old Polish, 1900–1903), we read:
A passion for dancing has been a characteristic feature of the indigenous Slavic peoples since time immemorial. Długosz, who recounted the Piast legends, says that Popiel II organised lengthy revels and dances. […] Brückner writes that ‘Germans probably originally knew sword games, but dances of both sexes or only of girls they must have seen for the first time among the Slavs and therefore introduced the Slavic term “dance” into the German language’. Polish chroniclers report that the day of Casimir the Great’s coronation in 1333 and the following days were spent dancing and races.
In Aleksander Brückner’s Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego (Etymological Dictionary of the Polish Language, 1927), we find a definition of dance, ending – as if in defiance of Gloger’s suggestion – ‘from the German “Tanz”, which also passed to the Romans (French “danse”, etc.)’.
Encyklopedia staropolska also contains an interesting fact: famous Polish surnames such as Rej or Firlej originate from dances of these names. Dancing skills were reflected in Polish literature quite early on, for example, in Jan Kochanowski’s Pieśń świętojańska o sobótce (Midsummer Song about St John’s Eve, 1586):
Maiden II
It is my great mischance
That I so gladly dance;
Tell me, my neighbours dear,
Do you this vice not share?
In our text, we will not limit ourselves to the Polish backyard. According to the principle stating that dance should connect people, not divide them, and that it was created to expand rather than close borders, let us give the floor to an international panel of experts. Voilà.
‘The Ashes’, directed by Andrzej Wajda, 1965, photo: Franciszek Kądziołka / WFDiF / National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute / fototeka.fn.org.pl
Instead of stomping with rage, learn to tap-dance.
Fred Astaire
When a woman dances, she creates art and becomes more sensual at the same time.
Ehab Atia
Learn to dance, or else the angels in heaven will not know what to do with you, O man!
Augustine of Hippo
To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.
Jane Austen
Dance is the metaphor for thought precisely because it shows by bodily means that thinking, in the form of its event-like occurrence, eludes all pre-existing knowledge.
Alain Badiou
An axiom of Polish philosophy: I dance, therefore I am.
Jan Baudouin de Courtenay
The history of dance goes back further than the beginning of any history. One could say that humans have been dancing for almost as long as they have been human. Everything that happened before is a bit too complicated.
David W. Barber
We played to their dancing, because when you are dancing you cannot die and you feel like God. And we played ragtime, because that’s the music God dances to when nobody’s watching.
Alessandro Baricco
I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
No one is born a dancer. You have to want it more than anything.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
I am interested not in how people move but in what moves them.
Pina Bausch
Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost.
Pina Bausch
Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.
Samuel Beckett
For me, to enter into motion is to enter into meditation.
Maurice Béjart
Whoever but tastes dance will never betray it.
Maurice Béjart
Dance is a versatile sport.
Maurice Béjart
Dance is one of the rare areas of human activity where a person is fully engaged: body, soul and mind.
Maurice Béjart
If you want to bed a woman, do it in the bedroom. If you want to seduce her, do it in the dance.
Anne Bishop
Dancing is not just about counting the degrees of an arabesque or the number of pirouettes a dancer can do. It is an art in which you have to find a balance between many things; a balance in which you find yourself and your innate abilities.
Roberto Bolle
Ballet is not a technique but a way of expression that comes more closely to the inner language of man than any other.
George Borodin
While I dance, I cannot judge, I cannot hate, I cannot separate myself from life. I can only be joyful and whole. This is why I dance.
Hans Bos
Dance is not a set of figures; you have to love it to learn it.
Auguste Bournonville
For what, after all, is our life but a great dance in which we are all trying to fix the best going rate of exchange, using our minds and our sex, our taste and our clothes?
Malcolm Stanley Bradbury
Anything you want to say can be expressed with dance; then it’s simple and easy.
Heywood Broun
The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing.
James Brown
The body in dance expresses the slightest quivers of the heart and expresses emotions in their purest form.
Ewa Buczek
True dance cannot be separated from the common man.
Ewa Buczek
The art of dance is probably the most direct indicator of a person’s temperament and their corresponding approach to life.
Ryszard Bukowski
To dance, you need two legs, two arms, but above all, you need a head.
Jonathan Burrows
Nietzsche said that sometimes we reach a point where things get so bad that there is only one thing to do – laugh or go mad. Today, the third option is to dance.
Jonathan Carroll
But dance isn’t something you write about; you have to do it.
Paulo Coelho
During any dance to which we surrender with joy, the brain loses its controlling power, and the heart takes up the reins of the body.
Paulo Coelho
Cursed be those who do not dance and who stand in the way of those who dance!
Paulo Coelho
Dance is one of the most perfect forms of communication with infinite intelligence.
Paulo Coelho
When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.
Paulo Coelho
It was hard to stop believing that a flower could be beautiful for no reason, hard to accept that you can dance in the dark.
Julio Cortázar
I believe that dance always contains four arts in itself: choreography, music, painting and literature.
George de Cuevas
For hardly any man dances when sober, unless he is insane. Nor does he dance while alone, nor at a respectable and moderate party.
Cicero
Dance is a silent declaration of love.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dancing is the last word in life. In dancing one draws nearer to oneself.
Jean Dubuffet
Dance is the movement of the universe concentrated in an individual.
Isadora Duncan
The birth of the theatre was the dance, and the first actor was the dancer.
Isadora Duncan
Dancers are the athletes of God.
Albert Einstein
Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is not mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.
Havelock Ellis
The word ‘dance’ has a similar pronunciation in all European languages: ‘danza’, ‘dance’, ‘tanz’, and comes from the root ‘tan’, which means ‘tension’ in Sanskrit. Dancing is experiencing and expressing, with maximum intensity, the relationship of man with nature, with society, with the future and with their gods.
Roger Garaudy
To dance is, first of all, to establish an active relationship between man and nature; it is to participate in the cosmic movement and dominion over it.
Roger Garaudy
Every dance is a discovery of ourselves.
Martha Graham
Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground.
Martha Graham
People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life.
Martha Graham
Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
Martha Graham
‘The Cruise’, directed by Marek Piwowski, 1970, photo: Marek Nowicki / WFDiF / National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute / fototeka.fn.org.pl
Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or of pain.
Martha Graham
Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
Martha Graham
Great dancers are not great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion.
Martha Graham
A dancer who skimps on every step can quickly find himself in poverty.
Jan Gross
Dance, my friend, is not just fun and games; no, it is an important social matter. The issue of marriage, for example, is closely related to the issue of dance. Nowadays, in France, marriage is in decline; the statistics prove it. As for me, I am convinced that the reason that fewer marriages are contracted is that people dance less.
Ludovic Halévy
After all, it is a sense of rhythm rather than learned figures that make a woman a good dance partner.
Thomas Hardy
The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word.
Mata Hari
Dance awakens our body and the power and soul hidden within it.
Colin Harrison
The trouble with nude dancing is that not everything stops when the music stops.
Robert Helpmann
Real men don’t dance. They sit, sweat and curse.
Bill Hicks
Thinking is the biggest mistake a dancer could make. You have to feel.
Michael Jackson
A sense of humour is just common sense dancing.
William James
When looking for something new, it is impossible to completely escape the classic, with its excellent technique, which, after all, trains and shapes dancers even today. My search and experimentation were an escape from the ready-made, stereotypical patterns of classical dance. They have been heading, and head, in the direction of the form imposed by the music, the theme, and often also the individuality of the dancer himself.
Janina Jarzynówna-Sobczak
In the beginning, there was the prima ballerina, the supernatural Sylphide, who stood on tiptoe to be closer to heaven.
Bogusław Kaczyński
A dancer’s time is a butterfly’s time.
Manula Kalicka
You can dance anywhere; that’s the beauty of dance.
Hervé Kay
If you want to lighten your heart, dance!
Nikos Kazantzakis
Home is where you dance with others, and dancing is life.
Stephen King
Many people dance to the tune that’s played, not only during carnival.
Józef Kolicz
Many times, I have felt how dancing can be wonderfully cathartic, soothing and healing. Of course, it can be just an ordinary physical exercise, but it can also be a form of meditation.
Jacek Koman
Ballet allows for touch, it overcomes distance, but it does not break the barriers of intimacy.
Katarzyna Krenz
The order of things: first the dance, then everything else.
Katarzyna Krenz
A dance studio makes you believe that the body must be beautiful.
Katarzyna Krenz
‘The Cruise’, directed by Marek Piwowski, 1970, photo: Marek Nowicki / WFDiF / National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute / fototeka.fn.org.pl
A ballet studio is a temple where entering in ordinary shoes is treated as a sacrilege.
Katarzyna Krenz
Dance is a mystery. It is not entirely clear how and when the experience that triggers movement awakens in us for its impression, one, two and the next, and all of them natural and as if unintentional, although fully conscious.
Katarzyna Krenz
Every person carries a dancer within him.
Rudolf Laban
It takes an athlete to dance but an artist to be a dancer.
Shanna LaFleur
The meaning of dance cannot be described in words and is intuitively understood. Due to its direct effect on the performer and the audience, dance has easily acquired a magical and mystical meaning. Thus, it has been predisposed to serve magic and religion since the beginning of time.
Roderyk Lange
According to existing evidence of human activity going back to ancient times, dance appears very early in the history of mankind as a form of poetry manifested through movement. It becomes an expression of non-verbal human creativity, enabling the transmission of content in a direct and vivid way.
Roderyk Lange
Life becomes something special through dance, awakening in the human soul a serene sense of freedom and a blissful awareness of some overwhelming energy that seems to lift us into the air.
Gerardus van der Leeuw
The Congress does not march, it dances.
Charles-Joseph de Ligne
I never stop dancing. Maybe not every step is right, but I dance with all my heart.
Jennifer Lopez
The essence of dance is that it should faithfully express and represent our spiritual experiences and vividly reveal what is mysterious to us.
Lucian of Samosata
Dance not only entertains but also serves a purpose, educates and teaches. It familiarises us with the sight of beautiful forms and opens up a world of enchanting sounds. It combines harmonious spiritual beauty and physical beauty. In this way, it develops and shapes taste.
Lucian of Samosata
When the ears hear music, the body dances.
Natalia Makarova
How beautifully, lightly you dance, Senator!
Adam Mickiewicz [Forefathers’ Eve, Part III]
Music and dancing are two arts that have a close connection.
Molier
Can you imagine how much courage it took to dance the tango?
Sławomir Mrożek
A true man can be recognised by how he dances the tango.
Wiesław Myśliwski
When you dance the tango, you forget everything, everything stops hurting, you just want to dance and dance.
Wiesław Myśliwski
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?
Friedrich Nietzsche
I would believe only in a god who could dance.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Lift up your hearts, you good dancers, high, higher!
Friedrich Nietzsche
No one occupies the totality of his body as great dancers do
Amélie Nothomb
I just listen to music, and my body responds.
Karolina Nowakowska
Language, dance and music are conceived as three equally important forms of expression.
Carl Orff
Dancing is creating a sculpture that is visible only for a moment.
Erol Ozan
I am haunted by the need to dance. It is the purest expression of every emotion, earthly and spiritual. It is happiness.
Anna Pavlova
A dancer dances because the blood dances in his veins.
Anna Pavlova
Dancing is a way of keeping your sanity in a world full of suffering and deprivation.
Ted Petrides
So the well-educated man will be able both to sing and to dance well.
Plato
Dancing is divine in its nature and is the gift of the gods.
Plato
The Dance, of all the arts, is the one that most influences the soul.
Plato
For me, dancing is above all beauty.
Jacek Przybyłowicz
You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching, / Love like you’ll never be hurt, / Sing like there’s nobody listening, / And live like it’s heaven on earth.
William W. Purkey
It’s hard to make him dance who is unwilling to jump.
Mikołaj Rej
A contemporary actor should also be a dancer, excellent at acting out text and singing. No means are more important than the others; they are all intertwined in one actor who has control over himself.
Tomasz Rodowicz
Dance used to be eroticism; today, it is gymnastics.
Sydne Rome
My Bible is the body because the body can’t lie. When you let your body dance, lies and dogmas immediately fall away. Dance is a cure.
Gabrielle Roth
Mine is a dancing path.
Gabrielle Roth
I believe that if you just set people in motion, they’ll heal themselves.
Gabrielle Roth
Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.
Rumi
This is a truly Neapolitan celebration, my prince; we are dancing on a volcano.
Narcise-Achille de Salvandy
There are no words to describe the boundless joy, love of life, and enchantment with existence that wash over the dancing man.
Trudi Schoop
Dancing: the vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalized by music.
George Bernard Shaw
‘Ashes and Diamonds’, directed by Andrzej Wajda, 1958, photo: Wiesław Zdort / WFDiF / National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute / fototeka.fn.org.pl
Ballet is spiritual material, the embodiment of thought in movement.
Igor Shevelev
In a beautiful dance as in life: there is no time for unnecessary movements.
Jadwiga Skibińska-Podbielska
Contact improvisation is a struggle with physical forces and a struggle with each other on a physical and psychological level. In the dancers’ movements, we observe human nature on a micro scale: in movement, in stillness, in emotions, dilemmas, anxieties and virtuosity. All of this can be seen in an exceptionally non-linear and non-narrative form.
Nancy Stark Smith
If this dance is to be an answer to fundamental questions, if it is to unite both the good and the bad, then this dance must be something; it must become a state of mind rather than just a dance form. The search for the origin of dance, for the fact that a person shows their whole inner self in dance, is a very big challenge for actors.
Ondrej Spišák
Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn’t music.
William Stafford
Ballet is more than just dancing, Nikolai. It is a way of life, a spirit, a part of your soul, a religion.
Danielle Steel
Some people learn to dance easily, others to play the violin, and still others to dance to someone else’s tune.
Eugeniusz Szulborski
Dance is a reflection of our body, sometimes playful, sometimes painful.
St Thomas Aquinas
Dancing is like bank robbery. It takes split-second timing.
Twyla Tharp
This celebration of the body, a feast before our souls, offers light and joy.
Paul Valéry
No outside world! For the dancer there is no outside… Nothing exists beyond the system she forms through her actions.
Paul Valéry
It’s hard to dance when the soloist is singing.
Jerzy Waldorff
Dream in circles. Dance in silence. Listen to the inner rhythm of life. Thirst while sinking into quicklime. Never stop fighting or dancing, or you will not hear the music.
William Wharton
Let us read and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.
Voltaire
Dancing is an art because it is subject to rules.
Voltaire
Like any art, dance is a form of meditation, but only when the dancer is truly immersed in it, forgetting the outside world.
Bernard Wosien
Dance is educational. It helps you achieve balance and freedom, inspires your imagination, and relaxes you.
Bernard Wosien
Life is movement.
Bernard Wosien
Dance – as I understand it – does not aim to change or clone the body according to a particular model but to shape it according to the truth about the human body – here, even a defect can be an advantage. I myself always try to treat it as an asset – there is no such thing as a wrong figure, there are various ones.
Ewa Wycichowska
Dance requires, above all, an awareness of the body and movement and not being ashamed of all things human. In dance, the body is used; it is a tool. However, by showing what he does with his body, the dancer shows who he is, not what he looks like.
Ewa Wycichowska
From the beginning, what fascinated me about dance was the truth about people: their feelings and appearance – that is, the acceptance of the real image of the body and the image of movement that is exposed through dance.
Ewa Wycichowska
Sources
Translated from Polish by Agnieszka Mistur
