The Sardana has captured the world's imagination: complimentary comments on the Sardana from around the world

The sardana is the flower of dances, the dance taken to its maximum expression. The culture of the sardana is a school of collective and individual perfection. Whilst taking part, dancers feel a sense of personal dignity and rhythm. It is magnificent. (Jean Amade, Erudite poet and narrator (Ceret 1878-1949)

Your dance is the supreme harmonization of individual rhythms. It translates a collective wish, the noblest, the highest. The sardana could be a school with adepts in the whole world. I don’t know anything similar to the sardana. I don’t think there is a more direct, total and profound artistic expression. Lots of dances have become nationals by a simple process of adaptation. The sardana, instead resumes and explains you. Consider me, please a true defender and propagator of the dance of your people. (Harold Bauer, English pianist and composer ( London 1873-Miami 1955)

I like a lot the popular dance of Catalonia, the sardana, accompanied by the tenora. I also danced it. Everybody holds hands and dances in a circle. All the square is full of people. It’s delightful. It’s human. I will keep a great memory of everything about the sardana. (Thomas Mann, German writer (Lübeck 1875-Zurich 1955)

My greatest pleasure is to sit at the piano, at the Circle of the House of Catalonia of New York and play sardanas to de danced by the young people brought together with enthusiasm, forming the typical circles. Kurt Schindler

Conductor and composer (Berlin 1882-New York 1935)

This distinguished dance is illustrative of the Catalan people and should be discovered by other nations. It’s a work of art joint with sport.

Albert Einstein

German physic.  Physic Nobel Prize 1921. (Ulm1879-Princeton1955)

The sardana is the greatest impact you can receive as a music listener. I would be very honoured to sign a score of them.

Richard Straus

German music and composer (Munich 1864- Gamisch 1949)

From Barcelona, the best dance is the sardana. I discovered it in Gràcia one night at the Festa Major. It is the most emotive I have ever seen in my life.

Irving Penn

The sardana. Marvellous! What delicacy! What dignity!

Cole Porter

North-American composer (Illinois1893-Santa Mònica 1964)

In order to understand the sardana, it’s not enough to observe the steps, nor to recognise the hidden arithmetic complexity; we also have to see why it represents more than a dance to the dancers: a song, a hymn, Catalonia.

John Langdon-Davies

English writer (Eshowe 1897-Shoreham 1971)

The sardana is the visual image which eternally affects us. There are those rings next to each other and also inside the others; perfect and regular circles, multiplying freely and irregularly, with variety of colours and dresses, illuminated by the Mediterranean sun.

Til Stegmann

German Professor of Spanish languages

I congratulate you for what you are doing to honour the sardana, which I’ve seen at your place. I was impressed. I read with interest the beautiful verses that Maragall dedicated to it. I, like him, believe that the dance which symbolises solemnity is real and true. You are right to preserve for your people, in the modern era, their graceful dances and the ideal of the dance incarnated by the sardana.

Albert Schweitzer

Theologist, pacifist, doctor and musician. Nobel Prize for Peace 1953 (Kayserberg 1875-Lambarene1965)

The sardana can aspire to be the official dance of the new Europe, as the Song of Happiness of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with text by Schiller, has become its hymn. As it was in purpose, amidst the blue of Europe’s flag, it forms a ring with a sardana of stars. The form, respected geometrically, it helps us and shows the way.

Vittorio Sicuri

Italian musicologist