You dance love, and you dance joy, and you dance dreams.
You dance love, and you dance joy, and you dance dreams. And I know if I can make you smile by jumping over a couple of couches or running through a rainstorm, then I'll be very glad to be a song and dance man.
I didn't want to move or act like a rich man. I wanted to dance in a pair of jeans. I wanted to dance like the man in the streets.
I got started dancing because I knew it was one way to meet girls.
Any man who looks like a sissy while dancing is just a lousy dancer.
In the 1930s there was this tendency in Hollywood to portray everyone as rich. Even if they were doing a poor man's dance, they were all so nicely clothed, gowned, coiffured. That's why I decided to wear white socks, loafers, T-shirts, and blue jeans. I had a sociopolitical context in front of me: I was a child of the Depression who danced in a way that would represent the common man.
The way I look at a musical, you are commenting on the human condition no matter what you do. A musical may be light and frivolous, but by its very nature, it makes some kind of social comment.
If Fred Astaire is the Cary Grant of dance, I'm the Marlon Brando.
Come on with the rain / I’ve a smile on my face.
Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat.
I never wanted to be a dancer. It's true! I wanted to be a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
I took it as it came and it happened to be very nice.
At 14 I discovered girls. At that time dancing was the only way you could put your arm around the girl. Dancing was courtship. Only later did I discover that you dance joy. You dance love. You dance dreams.
In film, a dancer should always be shot from head to toe, because that way you can see the whole body and that is the art of dancing. Nowadays they shoot the nose. Left nostril. Right nostril. Hand. Foot. Bust. Derrière. The film prevents you from determining who is a good dancer and who is not.
The future of dance will always be tied up with the public's acceptance of the star. If they accept the star, then they'll accept the dance.
I still find it almost impossible to relax for more than one day at a time.
Like an athlete, [dance] is an everyday job. You have to stay in shape - unless you just want to loaf through a couple of hoofing routines. But that just didn't satisfy me.
I wanted to do new things with dance, adapt it to the motion picture medium.
When Ginger Rogers danced with Astaire, it was the only time in the movies when you looked at the man, not the woman.
I miss the romance. I keep saying this over and over again, but dance follows music. And if the accent today is percussion and rhythm and loudness, then that is the way the dance numbers will be. But it is pretty hard on romance with seven guitars, three drums, and no melody instruments in the band.
I never played a rich man, I never played a prince. And to play a sailor or longshoreman you had to make your dance more eclectic and varied, but still keep it indigenous to your nationality, upbringing, and background.
The finest all-around performer we ever had in America was Judy Garland. There was no limit to her talent. She was the quickest, brightest person I ever worked with.
I wanted to invent some kind of American dance that was danced to the music that I grew up on: Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart and Irving Berlin. So I evolved a style that certainly didn't catch on right away - but I had some good mentors in New York who encouraged me.
I love rhythmic dancing - I'm not derogating it at all. It's just that sometimes you want to whisper, "I adore you." And for that you need strings and woodwinds.
I think dancing is a man's game and if he does it well he does it better than a woman.
