A Quote by Sylvie Guillem

As a professional ballet dancer, I have to accept that weekends are about work. The notion of a leisurely break with all the buzz and excitement of a Friday night simply doesn't exist for me.

Sylvie Guillem

Quote Topics

About Accept Ballet Ballet Dance Ballet Dancer Break Buzz Dancer Day Night Excitement Exist Friday Friday Night Me Night Notion Professional Simply Weekends Work

Quote Author

Sylvie Guillem
French - Dancer
Born: February 25, 1965

For sheer excitement, a weekend in New York is unbeatable. Arrive on Friday morning, leave on Monday night, and don't worry about jet lag - just buzz for four days.

Tim Pigott-Smith

I actually quit ballet when I was offered a job, an apprenticeship at North Carolina Dance Theater Company, run by John Pierre Bonnefoux and Patricia McBride, who are my idols. Everything sort of went perfectly. I was 16, and I was about to drop out of high school and become a professional ballet dancer.

Margaret Qualley

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.

Solange Knowles

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.

Laverne Cox

I've never danced professionally as a ballet dancer, but all of my training is ballet, and I am a Fosse dancer.

Bebe Neuwirth

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.

Helen Baxendale

The discipline that ballet requires is obsessive. And only the ones who dedicate their whole lives are able to make it. Your toenails fall off and you peel them away and then you're asked to dance again and keep smiling. I wanted to become a professional ballet dancer.

Penelope Cruz

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

I trained as a ballet dancer and fell in love with Rudolf Nureyev; I thought him the most beautiful creature. My mum had to break it to me that not only was he gay, but he was dead.

Jessica Brown Findlay

When I was 3 years old, my parents put me in ballet and I really thought I was gonna be a ballet dancer for a long time.

Helene Yorke

Before I was an actor I was a break dancer, one of those street performers you see. I guess my introduction into the professional world of performing was a stint as back up dancer for Lionel Richie and I performed at the closing ceremony at the '84 Olympics.

Cuba Gooding, Jr.

I knew I wanted to be a ballet dancer, but what kind, I wasn't sure. My two dream companies had been New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater.

Wendy Whelan

So I'm studying ballet every day and really training so people will see me as a ballet dancer, which no one's seen before.

Sutton Foster

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

My weekends start at about 4 P.M. on Friday afternoon, when I let go of work and leave my colleagues to crawl through the rest of the day in our New York offices.