Nietzsche on Dance

I would believe only in a god who could dance. And when I saw my devil I found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn: it was the spirit of gravity - through him all things fall. (Zarathustra, "On Reading and Writing")

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?

Every day I count wasted in which there has been no dancing.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. 

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

Only in the dance do I know how to tell the parable of the highest things.... (Zarathustra, "The Tomb Song")

How much a spirit needs for its nourishment, for this there is no formula; but if its taste is for independence, for quick coming and going, for roaming, perhaps for adventures for which only the swiftest are a match, it is better for such a spirit to live in freedom with little to eat than unfree and stuffed. It is not fat but the greatest possible suppleness and strength that a good dancer desires from his nourishment - and I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his art, and finally also his only piety, his "service of God." ("The Gay Science")


Lift up your hearts, my brothers, high, higher! And do not forget your legs either. Lift up your legs too, you good dancers; and better yet, stand on your heads!
(...)
Zarathustra, the dancer; Zarathustra, the light one who beckons with his wings, preparing for a flight, beckoning to all birds, ready and heady, blissfully lightheaded;
(...)
You higher men, the worst about you is that all of you have not learned to dance as one must dance - dancing away over yourselves! ...learn to laugh away over yourselves! Lift up your hearts, you good dancers, high, higher! And do not forget good laughter. This crown of him who laughs, this rose-wreath crown: to you, my brothers, I throw this crown. Laughter I have pronounced holy; you higher men, learn to laugh! (Zarathustra, "On the Higher Man," 17, 20, PN 407f.; quoted in the second preface to Birth of Tragedy, BWN 26f.)


For more quotes on the theme of "dance," go to: http://www.quotegarden.com/dancing.html

Overheard at a New Year's Eve Party in B-town

Conversation between female party guest and party host:

G: The DJ is AMAZING! Does he do this professionally or just for fun?
H: No, he's actually a lawyer.
G: Really? Is he single? (laughs)
H: (laughs) Yeah, I know, great taste in music, a lawyer... Just throw in a hybrid and you're like, "Hey, here's my heart, take it for a spin!"