A Quote by David Hallberg

Many dancers are content with the repertoire they're given. Others are dissatisfied but don't know why. Then there are a few like me that are curious and grab at everything. Can that curiosity thrive in the ballet world, or should it exist elsewhere? That's the eternal question.
So many people report to be contemporary dancers, and they're not. They are sort of jazz dancers that feel like they're throwing a bit of classical in there. I mean, a true contemporary dancer has got ballet as their base and classical ballet, and that is their base. And then they choose to extemporize on that and go into a contemporary world.
In the Royal Ballet Company, there was a Japanese principal dancer, and onstage and in ballet, they have colorblind castings - so I did see Asian dancers, and they were always my favorite. When you have someone who looks like you, it's something you can kind of grab onto, and it makes you feel better about your place in the world.
It's going to take a while before we see a real shift in the students and the dancers that are going into professional companies because it takes so many years of training, but I do think that there's a new crop of dancers, of minority dancers that are entering into the ballet world.
I was very curious about the world even at a young age, and I don't know at what point I became aware that other cultures believed in different religions, and my question was, 'Well, why don't they get to go to heaven then?' And the answer was always, 'Well, everyone gets a chance - meaning at the word of God as it was described to me then. And that didn't sit well with me then. But in times of trouble or discord, it's a great comfort. And it wasn't till I left home that I really came to the conclusion that it didn't make sense to me for many other reasons.
One of the eternal mysteries of ballet is how untalented choreographers find backers for their work, and then find good dancers to perform in it. Is it irresistible charm? Chutzpah? Pure determination? Blackmail? Or are so many supposedly knowledgeable people just plain blind?
How can you live the high life if you do not wear high heels? I don't understand why women wear these ballet pumps. They are only good if you walk like a ballet dancer, and only ballet dancers do that.
there is no reason why anyone should understand how it works… and of course no reason why anyone should care … unless you are curious, in which case I love you, for curiosity about the world and all its corners is a beautiful thing.
For me, in those days, the great question was: Does God exist? Or doesn't God exist? Can we, by an attitude of faith, attain to a sense of community and a better world? Or, if God doesn't exist, what do we do then? What does our world look like then? In none of this was there the least political colour.
We relate to Leonardo da Vinci because his genius was just being passionately curious about everything. He wanted to know everything he could know about our universe, including how we fit into it. We can't all have a superhuman intellect like Albert Einstein's, but we can be super-curious. And we can also quit smashing curiosity out of the hands our children.
I want the ballet world to be given the respect that it deserves and to be seen by more people - for so many to experience the beauty that I've received from the ballet world.
I had an indefatigable curiosity about everything. But why should my fate have depended upon that? Why does the curiosity of a child born into the lowest classes have to overcome everything put in his or her way to mute that curiosity, when a child born to parents with access to the advantages of life will have his meager curiosity kindled and nurtured? The unfairness is horrifying when it is properly understood as an unfairness meted out on children, on infants, on babies.
To me, this acquirement of nervous, physical, and emotional concentration is the one element possessed to the highest degree by the truly great dancers of the world. Its acquirement is the result of discipline, of energy in the deep sense. That is why there are so few great dancers.
Children, be curious. Nothing is worse (I know it) than when curiosity stops. Nothing is more repressive than the repression of curiosity. Curiosity begets love. It weds us to the world. It's part of our perverse, madcap love for this impossible planet we inhabit. People die when curiosity goes. People have to find out, people have to know.
The world of imagination is the world of eternity. It is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetated [i.e. mortal] body. This world of imagination is infinite and eternal, whereas the world of generation is finite and temporal. There exist in that eternal world the eternal realities of everything which we see reflected in this vegetable glass of nature.
I was very curious about the world even at a young age, and I don't know at what point I became aware that other cultures believed in different religions, and my question was, 'Well, why don't they get to go to Heaven then?'
I know that dancers, especially ballet dancers, can't do it forever.
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