19th-century Dancer Quotes

Anna Pavlova

Lola Montez

My dance is a sacred poem in which each movement is a word and whose every word is underlined by music. The temple in which I dance can be vague or faithfully reproduced, for I am the temple.

It is useless to dabble in beauty. One must be utterly devoted to beauty, with every nerve of the body.

A correct execution of an adagio is the ne plus ultra of our art; and I look on it as the touch-stone of the dancer.

Dance with all the might of your body, and all the fire of your soul, in order that you may shake all melancholy out of your liver; and you need not restrain yourself with the apprehension that any lady will have the least fear that the violence of your movements will ever shake anything out of your brains.