Ballet Quotes

A fine picture is but the image of nature; a finished ballet is nature herself.

I am a cloud - in trousers.

I grew up in the theater and danced ballet atrociously.

With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself.

Noncooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet.

In order to dance well, nothing is so important as the turning outwards of the thigh; and nothing is so natural to men as the contrary position.

This art, born of genius and good taste, can become beautiful and varied to an infinite degree.

Ballet is quite unnatural on the joints. My body is just worn. My joints are 10 years older than me.

The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.

I did ballet, jazz and flamenco from when I was five years old. And my professional career started with dancing in musicals.

I was completely broke, so I started saying yes to everything. I said yes to a woman who approached me about shooting the Dracula ballet, even though I felt like I was probably going to sabotage it.

You go to the ballet and you see girls dancing on their tiptoes. Why don't they just get taller girls?

Somewhere in there the grace of a ballet dancer joins with the strength of an SAS squaddie, the dignity of an ancient kind, the nerve of a bomb disposal officer.

The Dance instills in you something that sets you apart. Something heroic and remote.

A dance performance is rather like going out into a battlefield. You have to hold the attention of as many as five to 10,000 people a lot of whom do not follow your language.

Transplanting the ballet to the United States is like trying to raise a palm tree in Dakota.

Don't you think you're quite young?' 'I'm twenty-one,' said Brida. 'If I wanted to start learning ballet, I'd be conseidered too old.

It is not a question of who dances but of who or what does not dance.

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

If the simple positions of ballet are demonstrated straight on, they seem quite dull and lifeless, but when put on a diagonal, they begin to take on all kinds of possibilities.

If a ballet dancer falls over, it's knowing how to get out looking clumsy that counts.

I don't try to dance better than anybody but myself.

Let that day be lost to us on which we did not dance once!

you...are...a...frige...with...wings...we...are...freaking...ballet...dancers!

However, the moral center of New York City, I believe, is the New York City Ballet.

You increase muscle bulk by training against resistance. For example, weights. And in ballet, this isn't the case.

If we don't take that time (to be romantic), then it's karate, then it's ballet, and then there's Christmas, and then my husband is flying off to tour around the world.

Ballet really taught me so much about the power of movement.

True art consists in concealing art.

When you are on stage in front of an audience, you want to engage the entire crowd. If a thousand people are in the theater, you need to dance a thousand different ways, not one-thousandth of a way.

Of course I was always mad about the ballet russe, mad about it!

When we go in the ring we know we're going to get hit. We know we're not the ballet people. But if you go in there and have doubt in your mind that you're afraid to get hit, forget it.

You know, ballet might be too formal of a title for the type of dance I do, but I love to dance.

I think it's really important to mix cardio with toning, so I love boxing and then add in Pilates or ballet to keep me long and lean and avoid bulking up.

Hopefully, I'll be a part of ABT, in some way, forever. I think I'll always be a part of ballet and try to push diversity, for as long as I live.

I think classical ballet dancers dance on pointe because they're simultaneously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies

Ballet is good, because it makes you stand up tall.

Heaven help the American-born boy with a talent for 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.

It is not a question of skimming the surface of the art, it must be probed to its depths, for to seize upon superficial things only is to degenerate into mediocrity and obscurity.

Dancing and ballets would undoubtedly take on a new lease on life, if the customs established by a spirit of fear and jealousy did not in some way close the path of glory.

Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.

Ballet in the air... Twin butterflies until, twice white They Meet, they mate

I grew up with classical music when I was a ballet dancer. Now when I have to prepare an emotional scene, to cry or whatever, I listen to sonatas. Vivaldi and stuff. It's just beautiful to me.

Ballet is a riddle of means and ends.

I danced with passion to spite the music.

Please send me your last pair of shoes, worn out with dancing as you mentioned in your letter, so that I might have something to press against my heart.

The vocabulary and manner of classical ballet express a high order of discipline and restraint, a sense of harmony with forces larger and more lasting than the individual.

Some Russian ballet master woman said there's no culture in America, but if you look you can find interesting stuff in this country, don't you think?

Mostly folk music is people with fruity voices trying to keep alive something old and dead. It's all a bit boring, like ballet: a minority thing kept going by a minority group.