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It's not the dance, it's the dancer
Posted by RRC on December 12, 2007
In Reply to: It's not the dance, it's the dancer posted by Ofra on December 12, 2007
: What is the meaning of the phrase, 'It's not the dance, it's the dancer'?
: And is it equivalent to the phrase, 'It's not the pitch, it's the baseball'?
Neither of these get any Google hits, but I will venture to say that they are examples of a snowclone. ( See: en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Snowclone ) A snowclone is an old cliche in which some words are replaced to make the cliche suitable to a different context. I believe the original here is "It's not the heat, it's the humidity!"
As the two sentences have been adapted to specific situations, I'll go out on a limb and say that they are not equivalent as one is about dancing and the other is about baseball.
