Do it big, do it right and do it with style.
Some people seem to think that good dancers are born, but all the good dancers I have known are taught or trained...
For ballroom dancing, remember that your partners have their own distinctive styles also. Cultivate flexibility. Be able to adapt your style to that of your partner. In doing so, you are not surrendering your individuality, but blending it with that of your partner.
When you’re experimenting you have to try so many things before you choose what you want, and you may go days getting nothing but exhaustion.
There comes a day when people begin to say: “Why doesn’t that old duffer retire?” I want to get out while they’re still saying Astaire is a hell of a dancer.
I have no desire to prove anything by my work. I have never used it as an outlet or as a means of expressing myself. I just dance.
I just put my feet in the ground and move them around.
I just told my agent to forget all other projects for me. I was waiting for Audrey Hepburn. She asked for me, and I was ready. This could be the last and only opportunity I’d have to work with the great and lovely Audrey Hepburn and I was not missing it. Period.
When you have a Dancing partner, there’s always gonna be a moment where the girl’s gonna cry, Ginger didn’t do that. But, most every other girl I’ve worked with have cried because they said “aah, I can’t do it” and I have to go “Yes, you can, Shut up!” and they do do it.
If the dance is right, there shouldn’t be a single superfluous movement.
I often take a brand-new suit or hat and throw it up against the wall a few times to get that stiff, square newness out of it.
Dancing is a sweat job.
If we followed our own advice, we’d be successful.
I don’t make love by kissing, I make love by dancing.
It takes time to get a dance right, to create something memorable.
If your gonna go down, go down swinging!
If it doesn’t look easy it is that we have not tried hard enough yet.
But I do nothing that I don’t like, such as “inventing” up to the arty or “down” to the corny. I happen to relish a certain type of corn. What I think is the really dangerous approach is the “let’s be artistic” attitude. I know that artistry just happens.
Chance is the fool’s name for Fate.
Be yourself-but don’t be conspicuous.