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| Contra dancing is the most fun you can have with your clothes on! | Unknown |
| It’s ecstatic spiritual practice masquarading as recreation. | Doug Plummer on Contra Dance. |
| Turning, moving, spinning, dresses swirling, music beating, eyes in contact with a partner, then another, then another, then another, and the fiddle turns a corner, the phrase repeats, the dance repeates. You smile. Your body smiles. Everywhere. | Ditto. |
| Your feet can learn the steps, but only your spirit can dance. | Unknown. |
| The lines, which a number of people together form, in country dancing, make a delightful play upon the eye, especially when the whole figure is to be seen at one view as at the playhouse from a gallery. The beauty of this kind of "mystic dancing," as the poets term it, depends upon moving in a composed variety of lines, chiefly serpentine, governed by the principals of intricacy. ... One of the most pleasing movements in country dancing which answers to all the principles of varying at once, is what they call the "hey." | Analysis of Beauty, William Hogarth |
| 1. Beginning Dancer. Knows nothing. 2. Intermediate Dancer. Knows everything. Too good to dance with beginners. 3. Hotshot Dancer. Too good to dance with anyone. 4. Advanced dancer. Dances everything. Especially with beginners. |
Attr.to Dick Crum (?), folk dance teacher |
| Q. How many contradancers does it take to change a light bulb? A. Only one. But you have to walk it thru twice. |
Anonymous |
| Men sweat, but women glisten. | I heard George say it first. |
| We consider that any man who can fiddle all through one of those Virginia Reels without losing his grip, may be depended upon in any kind of musical emergency. | Mark Twain |
| No move is too tricky, no spin too excessive. For my partner. | John Hayes |
| Love is sixty-four beats long. | Rhiannon |
| Contradancing is the only thing you can do with multiple partners in one night and not have to worry about a damn thing. | Ditto |
| A woman is not a weapon. | Heard it from Carol |
| Newton's First Law of Dance: A Follower in motion continues in motion until an external force acts upon her |
Ken Haltenhoff |
| A man who dances has his choice of romances. | Unknown |
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For the good are always merry Save by an evil chance And the merry love the fiddle And the merry love the dance. |
W. B. Yeats, The Fiddler of Dooney |
| NATURAL LAW If you dance with a grizzly bear, you had better let him lead. |
Unknown |
| "If their feet aren't in the right place, at least their hearts are." | Christian M. Chensvold |
| Some people move their feet while there is music, some move their feet with the music. | Kate Elliot |
| Come and trip it as you go On the light fantastic toe. |
John Milton, L'Allegro, line 25 |
| I should not believe in a God who does not dance. | F.W. Nietzsche |
| When someone blunders, we say that he makes a misstep. Is it then not clear that All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill our history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill in dancing. | Moliere, 1622 |
| Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. | Kurt Vonnegut |
| A vertical expression of a horizontal desire | George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950) on dancing |
| 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 |
| To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak. | Hopi saying |
| 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 no one is watching, It's gotta come from the heart, if you want it to work. |
Susannah Clark |
| To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love. | Jane Austen |
| If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution. | Emma Goldman |
| On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing hours with flying feet. |
Lord Byron, *Childe Harold's Pilgrimage*, Canto III, Stanza 22 |
| Fine dance, I believe like virtue, must be its own reward. | Jane Austen |
| As the dance went faster, it became somehow easier for her as she lost her self-consciousness in her absorption in the music. Low drums came in, the high ones pounding out patterns above, matching the pipes. She danced, kick-hop, slide step away, clap and return, moved to the next partner, danced, stamped, and whirled into the arms of Bakhtiian. "Hold!" yelled the drummer: hold to this partner. The contest had begun. Bakhtiian glared at her, but pulled her in, and they pivoted. Where she pulled out, she felt an exact counterweight against her. His hand on her lower back signaled her steps, and when he had to turn her so fast that she got dizzy, his other arm steadied her, strong at her waist, until she got her balance back. By the end of the first set, they understood each other. By the end of the second, they could no longer tell if the music was speeding up. Tess laughed. Step-behind and five stamps, five stamps. She felt as if her soul were flowing out through her limbs, her finger and her toes, her eyes and her lips. His face seemed luminous, as though sparks of fire had caught it and then spread down to burn in flashes on his shirt; he was not smiling. He spun, and she spun-the drummer called out, "To end!"- and she and Bakhtiian pivoted ten times and came to a pefect halt, stock-still and panting and exactly placed in the circle. Except there was no circle. They had won. |
Kate Elliot, from Jaran |
| The girl who can't dance says the band can't play. | Yiddish Proverb |
| He who cannot dance puts the blame on the floor. | Hindu proverb |
| Upon comparing marriage to dancing, Henry Tilney to Catherine Morland: "And such is your definition of matrimony and dancing. Taken in that light certainly, their resemblance is not striking; but I think I could place them in such a view. -- You will allow, that in both, man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal; that in both, it is an engagement between man and woman, formed for the advantage of each; and that when once entered into, they belong exclusively to each other till the moment of its dissolution; that it is their duty, each to endeavour to give the other no cause for wishing that he or she had bestowed themselves elsewhere, and their best interest to keep their own imaginations from wandering towards the perfections of their neighbours, or fancying that they should have been better off with anyone else. |
Jane Austen, from Northanger Abbey |
| Mr. Collins, awkward and solemn, apologising instead of attending, and often moving wrong without being aware of it, gave her all the shame and misery which a disagreeable partner for a couple of dances can give. The moment of her release from him was exstacy. | You-know-who, Pride and Prejudice |
| "With a Right hand Wheel...And back the other way...With a Left hand Wheel!...Pick up your partner!" The Doctor's strong arms lifted me off the floor as easily as if I had been a child. Whirl and twirl...bend and swing...round and round. The music was so delicious. It ached behind my eyes and pulled and titillated. "Swing your partner!" I was spun through the air, blood racing with the music, aware of the Doctor's face close to mine, sometimes half-smiling, sometimes laughing, drawing me to him. "Right-Left, Right-left...And now, once a-gain, swing your partner- Prom-e-nade!"...I was caught up in the gleeful harmony beating at my temples, singing in my blood, pulling at my nerves, tinglingly delightful. The Doctor danced as naturally as a bird flies or a fish swims. By now I knew that I didn't even have to think; I could just give myself to his arm around me with assurance. The guiding arm was so sure and firm, the rhythm such a part of my body now that I could almost forget about my feet. It ended too soon. | Catherine Marshall, Christy |
| He: "Can I have the last dance with you?" She: "You are having it!" | Unknown |