Quotes and Sayings about Ballet
"In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell... we can't dance synonyms."
- George Balanchine
(Related: Dance, Ballet)
"The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener."
- George Balanchine
(Related: Ballet, Flowers, Garden, Man, Woman)
"In my ballets, woman is first. Men are consorts. God made men to sing the praises of women. They are not equal to men: They are better."
- George Balanchine
(Related: Men, Women, God, First, Woman)
"Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned."
- George Balanchine
(Related: Ballet, Medicine, states, Teachers, United)
"One of the few things in dance to match the Royal Ballet's curtain calls is the Royal Ballet's dancing."
- Clive Barnes
(Related: Dance, Ballet, Dancing)
"I have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer's work is."
- Mikhail Baryshnikov
(Related: Work)
"Every ballet, whether or not successful artistically or with the public, has given me something important."
- Mikhail Baryshnikov
(Related: Successful, Ballet, Public)
"If a ballet dancer falls over, it's knowing how to get out looking clumsy that counts."
- Ritchie Blackmore
(Related: Ballet)
"You increase muscle bulk by training against resistance. For example, weights. And in ballet, this isn't the case."
- Deborah Bull
(Related: Ballet, Example, Training)
"Dancing is a tough career, but I'm glad I spent it at the Royal Ballet."
- Deborah Bull
(Related: Ballet, Career, Dancing)
"I do take class because I still dance, and yes, I do slip into class with the Royal Ballet from time to time."
- Deborah Bull
(Related: Time, Dance, Ballet, Class)
"Ballet is completely unnatural to the body, just being turned-out... it's not the way your body is supposed to function, so you actually train your body to be a different structure than you were born with."
- Neve Campbell
(Related: Ballet, Being, Body)
"Dance is very, very old. With Louis XIV at Versailles is where ballet started."
- Neve Campbell
(Related: Dance, Ballet, Old)
"The music industry is so easy compared to the ballet world."
- Vanessa Carlton
(Related: Music, Ballet, World)
"I like new ballets because they're totally new. As you get older, new experiences are harder and harder to come by, so it's pretty great to have a new experience."
- Robert Caro
(Related: Experience, Pretty)
"I never went to a ballet until I was 45 years old. I don't know why."
- Robert Caro
(Related: Ballet, Old, Years)
"Everything seems to be going faster and faster. It's really harder to create something that endures. The New York City Ballet has succeeded in doing that."
- Robert Caro
(Related: Ballet)
"Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery."
- Robert Caro
(Related: Ballet, Mystery, Want)
"At the ballet, you really feel like you're in the presence of something outside the rest of your life. Higher than the rest of your life."
- Robert Caro
(Related: Life, Ballet, Rest)
"I deliberately made an effort not to become an expert on the ballet."
- Robert Caro
(Related: Ballet, Effort)
"The New York City Ballet is obviously speaking to a whole new generation and bringing it the same wonder and beauty that it brought previous generations."
- Robert Caro
(Related: Beauty, Ballet, Generations, Wonder)
"The ballet embodies the notes of music. And sometimes you almost feel like you can see the notes dance up there on the stage."
- Robert Caro
(Related: Music, Dance, Ballet)
"Sometimes during a ballet I'll look around and see all these rows of intent faces, concentrating on this beautiful thing up on the stage."
- Robert Caro
(Related: Ballet, Faces)
"The moment the curtain rose on that first ballet, I knew something wonderful and new had come into my life. I can still see the first scene. The ballet was Divertimento No. 15."
- Robert Caro
(Related: Life, Ballet, First)
"I toured the Middle Eastern countries with the ballet."
- Leslie Caron
(Related: Ballet, Countries)
"I skate about 15 to 20 hours a week and also incorporate a lot of off-ice training. I take ballet and Pilates classes and lift weights with my physical therapist when I'm not on the ice."
- Sasha Cohen
(Related: Ballet, Training)
"It's no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, 'Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.' By then, pigs will be your style."
- Quentin Crisp
(Related: Ballet, Running, Saying, Style, Will, Years)
"I grew up studying ballet; I grew up honing my craft."
- Janice Dickinson
(Related: Ballet)
"The real American type can never be a ballet dancer. The legs are too long, the body too supple and the spirit too free for this school of affected grace and toe walking."
- Isadora Duncan
(Related: American, Ballet, Body, Grace, School, Spirit, Walking)
"I went to the Performing Arts School and studied classical ballet. That attitude is something that's put into your head. You are never thin enough."
- Carmen Electra
(Related: Attitude, Ballet, School)
"The particular ballet was not so important as the fact that I was physically healthy, and capable of getting out there and dancing as often as possible."
- Suzanne Farrell
(Related: Ballet, Dancing, Fact)
"On the other hand, I think it is wonderful for everyone to take ballet classes, at any age. It gives you a discipline, it gives you a place to go. It gives you some control in your life."
- Suzanne Farrell
(Related: Life, Age, Control, Discipline, Ballet)
"In fact, ballet companies did not exist in the Midwest when I was a child."
- Suzanne Farrell
(Related: Ballet, Fact)
"I didn't care too much for ballet, because you had to be more disciplined, and you sort of looked like everyone else. It required a certain kind of conformity that I didn't feel like I wanted to do."
- Suzanne Farrell
(Related: Ballet, Care, Conformity)
"There might've been wires, but I have this ability to make myself light. Well you know what, in ballet, when you kind of lift yourself here, it's all up in the head."
- Albert Finney
(Related: Ability, Ballet, Light)
"I was a ballet dancer and that kind of bled into musical theater. I was constantly in rehearsal for one thing or another."
- Jennifer Garner
(Related: Ballet, Theater)
"The real beauty of it - key to my life was playing key chords on a banjo. For somebody else it may be a golf club that mom and dad put in their hands or a baseball or ballet lessons. Real gift to give to me and put it in writing."
- Vince Gill
(Related: Beauty, Dad, Life, Mom, Ballet, Baseball, Golf, Key, May, Writing)
"I think of the New York City Ballet as the Yankees without George Steinbrenner."
- John Guare
(Related: Ballet)
"The New York City Ballet is always about the realm of possibilities, the realm of what the human body can do, what the human spirit can do. And it's about listening, it's about listening to remarkable music and how we respond to that."
- John Guare
(Related: Music, Ballet, Body, Listening, Possibilities, Remarkable, Spirit)
"The life of a dancer is tragically short. What is remarkable about the New York City Ballet is that it makes us forget that. Because it keeps the ballet alive."
- John Guare
(Related: Life, Ballet, Forget, Remarkable)
"The ballet makes us look at those bodies, it makes us listen to that music, it makes us wonder at the geometry, of the way they come together. The way that extraordinary space is controlled and given such emotional force."
- John Guare
(Related: Music, Ballet, Force, Geometry, Space, Wonder)
"I think that every year that the New York City Ballet is alive is worthy of celebration. Because otherwise the terrible thing is just that we take it for granted."
- John Guare
(Related: Ballet)
"However, the moral center of New York City, I believe, is the New York City Ballet."
- John Guare
(Related: Ballet)
"Does the New York City Ballet affect other places? Yeah, it lets people know they should come to New York."
- John Guare
(Related: People, Ballet)
"And what would be great numbers in a Broadway show are now on stage of the New York City Ballet."
- John Guare
(Related: Ballet, Now, Numbers)
"And it is always Easter Sunday at the New York City Ballet. It is always coming back to life. Not even coming back to life - it lives in the constant present."
- John Guare
(Related: Life, Ballet, Easter, Present)
"All the New York City Ballet does is hit beautiful home runs."
- John Guare
(Related: Home, Ballet)
"God comes to us in theater in the way we communicate with each other, whether it be a symphony orchestra, or a wonderful ballet, or a beautiful painting, or a play. It's a way of expressing our humanity."
- Julie Harris
(Related: God, Ballet, Humanity, Painting, Play, Theater)
"I've got no plans to be a ballet dancer at the moment."
- Neil Patrick Harris
(Related: Ballet)
"My Mom is a ballet director, so I had this idea in me that classical training is the best foundation for anything you do, so I wanted to get a classical background and voice."
- Shuler Hensley
(Related: Mom, Idea, Ballet, Training, Voice)
"When other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers I kind of wanted to be a vampire."
- Angelina Jolie
(Related: Ballet, Girls)
"For 24 hours a day, for 10 years, all I thought about was being in a band. That's all I did. I had no other social life. I don't want my life to be like that now. I've spent the past 10 years having a real life as well. But Spandau Ballet is such a difficult shadow to outrun."
- Gary Kemp
(Related: Life, Thought, Ballet, Being, Day, Now, Past, Shadow, Want, Years)
"My background is somewhat unusual, as I trained to be a ballet dancer. I worked in the theatre for eight or nine years as a contemporary dancer. But as an actor one does read Shakespeare and does try to learn the classics."
- William Kempe
(Related: Actor, Ballet, Shakespeare, Theatre, Years)
"I used to dance when I was younger - ballet and modern dance."
- Nastassja Kinski
(Related: Dance, Ballet)
"I had never picked up a basketball before. I went through a grueling audition process. It was almost as if I was learning to walk. It would be like teaching somebody to dance ballet for a role."
- Sanaa Lathan
(Related: Dance, Ballet, Basketball, Learning, Teaching)
"I wanted so badly to study ballet, but it was really all about wearing the tutu."
- Elle Macpherson
(Related: Ballet, Study)
"Ballet-girls have a bad reputation, which is in most cases well deserved."
- Henry Mayhew
(Related: Ballet, Reputation)
"I went away when I was 9 to a ballet school. I thought I wanted to be a dancer, but eight years of ballet cured me of that."
- Juliet Mills
(Related: Thought, Ballet, School, Years)
"In the Thirties, when I was in New York, I did the first surrealistic ballet in a show of mine."
- Vincente Minnelli
(Related: Ballet, First)
"Mum, who had been a dancer with a small ballet company before she got married, was full of encouragement. She didn't say, 'This is really good, you should do this', She just encouraged us to do whatever we liked."
- Dannii Minogue
(Related: Ballet, Company, Encouragement)
"I wanted to give people - which is fairly bizarre considering my whole life is contemporary dance really - I wanted to give people a really fulfilling sense that they had seen a white classical ballet - in a very pure form."
- Graeme Murphy
(Related: Life, People, Dance, Ballet, Bizarre, Sense)
"I copied my brother. He was a natural dancer. Graceful. People always asked did we study ballet. We never did."
- Harold Nicholas
(Related: Brother, People, Ballet, Study)
"I grew up in the theater and danced ballet atrociously."
- Maureen O'Hara
(Related: Ballet, Theater)
"Heaven help the American-born boy with a talent for ballet."
- Camille Paglia
(Related: Talent, American, Ballet, Heaven, Help)
"People who leave Washington do so by way of the box... ballet or coffin."
- Claiborne Pell
(Related: People, Ballet, Washington)
"Figure skating is an unlikely Olympic event but its good television. It's sort of a combination of gymnastics and ballet. A little sexy too which doesn't hurt."
- Andy Rooney
(Related: Ballet, Hurt, Television)
"I got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle. It wasn't mine."
- Rita Rudner
(Related: Ballet, Class)
"Being a former dancer, classical dancer, it informed me as a human being just in terms of the grace I guess. Ballet is a very graceful form of art. You also become very aware of your body and your mind and your body is working in conjunction. That kind of helps you in acting as well. It's not only using your mind, it's like making your mind communicate this character into your body so that you can bring it to life and physicalize it."
- Zoe Saldana
(Related: Life, Art, Character, Acting, Ballet, Being, Body, Grace, Mind)
"I went to art school when I was little. I took ballet lessons. I played a little kick ball. I was sort of into everything because I had too much energy and I didn't know where to put it. When I was a preteen, I got into singing, and became really obsessed with it."
- Amanda Seyfried
(Related: Art, Ballet, Energy, School, Singing)
"My grandmother had a Miss Margaret's School of Dance to teach tap and ballet to kids, but I never studied it. I was raised a Mormon and they're dancing fools. It's the only vice they have - dancing."
- Michelle Shocked
(Related: Dance, Ballet, Dancing, Fools, Kids, Mormon, School, Vice)
"It was something I was more interested in myself. When I went to see my sister dance at ballet, I was really into costumes and the arts, and my family was also supportive of whatever me and my sister wanted to do. I would say I pushed myself the most to be into design."
- Christian Siriano
(Related: Design, Family, Sister, Dance, Ballet)
"I wanted to be a ballet teacher."
- Jaclyn Smith
(Related: Ballet)
"You can't drink on an eight hour flight, pass out, and then go onstage... well you can, but then you're Spandau Ballet."
- Robert Smith
(Related: Ballet)
"I went to ballet school for nine years, and there was an agent for the whole school who happened to be there visiting one of the performances. She suggested an audition."
- Sarah Sutton
(Related: Ballet, School, Years)
"I took several years of dance lessons that included ballet, tap and jazz. They helped a great deal with body control, balance, a sense of rhythm, and timing."
- Lynn Swann
(Related: Dance, Control, Balance, Ballet, Body, Jazz, Sense, Years)
"A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I'm beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things."
- Twyla Tharp
(Related: People, Dance, Ballet, Beginning)
"When life takes me on a new journey, I simply remember the smile my first ballet recital put on my face and I move forward."
- Andrea Thompson
(Related: Life, Ballet, First, Journey, Smile)
"Acting is a sense of wonder and magic and mystery for me and when life takes me on a new journey, I simply remember the smile my first ballet recital put on my face and I move forward."
- Andrea Thompson
(Related: Life, Acting, Ballet, First, Journey, Magic, Mystery, Sense, Smile, Wonder)
"I have ballet class every other day for two hours. And for "Six Feet Under", last week there was a sequence where I had to do a whole choreographed dance number, so I had four hours of dance practice every day."
- Michelle Trachtenberg
(Related: Dance, Ballet, Class, Day, Feet, Practice)
"I am both proud and honored to be on the Board of Directors for the Texas Ballet Theater."
- Janine Turner
(Related: Ballet, Theater)
"There would never have been a British Ballet without Diaghilev. He had a wonderful influence."
- Ninette de Valois
(Related: Ballet, Influence)
"Classical ballet will never die."
- Ninette de Valois
(Related: Ballet, Will)
"Wrestling is ballet with violence."
- Jesse Ventura
(Related: Ballet, Violence, Wrestling)
"I had to do a tango with Raft and I learned to dance in ballet shoes with my knees bent."
- Marie Windsor
(Related: Dance, Ballet)