A Quote by Kevin McKenzie

I think most dancers would agree that the art of ballet chooses the dancer, not the other way around. — © Kevin McKenzie
I think most dancers would agree that the art of ballet chooses the dancer, not the other way around.
I really developed an early love for ballet. Like most dancers, I am still 'first' a dancer. I'm very proud of it. Once you are a dancer, the physicality never leaves you, nor does the strength. Hopefully, it keeps you like an athlete.
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.
I originally wanted to be a ballet dancer and trained for years, but when I was around 18, I realized I wasn't going to be as good a ballet dancer as I'd hoped I'd be and decided to become an actress instead.
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.
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.
I actually was a ballet dancer - I studied ballet from three until 13 - but like very seriously, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a contemporary ballet dancer. I wanted to go to Juilliard.
I believe that it is important for the artist, painter, poet, dancer, etc. to keep in mind that it is the art that drives the art world and not the other way around. Artists and other people of intelligence have the power to bring deeper content to our culture.
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.
When you train as a dancer, you understand you have to work exceptionally hard. I think dancers are the hardest - working people in show business. You have to push your body beyond where you thought it could go. It's athleticism. Perfection doesn't exist, but with classical ballet, there is an ideal, and I got obsessed with that ideal. In some ways, it was problematic because I don't have an ideal ballet body, but the discipline is what I carry with me to this day. That's my park, the discipline of dancing.
I've never danced professionally as a ballet dancer, but all of my training is ballet, and I am a Fosse dancer.
As a dancer, you really try to stay true to whatever the choreographer/artistic director is giving you. So, now the shoe is on the other foot and I have to trust everyone else - I have to trust the dancer. As I was trusted as a dancer, I trust my dancers.
For most actors, it is the script that chooses them and not the other way around.
I taught and studied dance in college, and for over a decade, I thought that would be my career: tap dancer, ballet dancer, modern dancer. I still find myself doing some tumbling or interpretive dancing in the grocery store every now and then.
A producer wouldn't think of making a film about ballet dancers without using real dancers, but they will cast actors who have never held a bat in baseball films.
If I had to reflect on the finest classical male ballet dancers of my time, Vladimir Vasiliev of the Bolshoi and the Danish dancer Eric Bruhn were, I feel, without peer.
Ballet is a healthy world despite what people might think. There's a perception that ballet dancers are skinny and unhealthy, but that's rubbish. You have to be strong, so eating regularly and healthily is essential.
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