A Quote by Robert Gottlieb
The Kirov is a great ballet company because it has so many terrific dancers, but it doesn't always know what to do with them.
Related Quotes
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.
The Royal Ballet is the best paid company, but the dancers get nothing. The stage crew get paid three times more than the dancers, and they have a job for life - dancers only have 10 years.
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.
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.
Mr. Balanchine was a great gentleman, and he loved his dancers. He was devoted to his company. He came to the ballet every night, and his presence was felt. It was like the whole company was dancing for him. And if he liked you, he trusted you to be yourself. He didn't try to change you and make you into something you were not.
The first time the Kirov ballet was seen in America was on Sept. 11, 1961. The ballet was 'Swan Lake.' The ballerina was Inna Zubkovskaya. The place was the old Met, on what must have been one of the hottest nights of the year, and there was no air-conditioning.
I'm not fond of the idea of doing ballet for ballet's sake, because dancers get exploited and they're not paid well. They do it for the love.
I know that dancers, especially ballet dancers, can't do it forever.
Ballet needs figures that people can recognize and relate to. People don't know ballet dancers as well as they know other artists.
You can usually tell how healthy a ballet company is by the degree of your interest in the middle ranks of the dancers - the not-yet stars, the up-and-comers.
I don't have many actors in my family, but I do have a Great Uncle that is a film-maker in Philadelphia, and my great-great-grandparents were Flamenco dancers in the 30's in New York, they were Spanish dancers.
It's hard to be the one that stands out when, you know, in a ballet company, you're trying to create unison and uniform when you're in a corps de ballet.
Making the ballet really taught me how to get things moving. Ballet dancers don't stand still.
It's time for there to be roles in the ballet where two men can fall in love, and a woman can lead a company of 20 dancers that include both men and women.
Ballet dancers really know how to enter a room.
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.
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