Top 981 Ballet Quotes & Sayings - Page 14

I don't force myself to exercise; I find going to gyms really boring. I find it easier to go for a fast walk or a jog in Central Park. I wear sensible shoes because my ballet dancing left me with a bunion on one foot after all the pointe exercises.

My mom devised a plan to get me out of the house and gave me the choice between ballet or skating. She knew both of those sports were time-consuming and would keep me busy with hours of practice.

At the ballet, you really feel like you're in the presence of something outside the rest of your life. Higher than the rest of your life.

Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet-dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list -- the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation.

My mother was the influence on me - my father was absent. He was a diamond dealer; he was doing wonderful things in the background, and women were left at home. So my mother really was in charge of everything: the ballet, dance lessons, piano lessons, and latkes.

When I was at the Royal Ballet School, I remember receiving my first eyeshadow palette from Marks & Spencer as a gift. It sparked my interest in beauty, which peaked when I became more involved in theatre and got to experience so many stunning image transformations to suit different productions.

Whether it was 'The Krays' or 'EastEnders' or the songs in Spandau Ballet, if you do a good job or make something that people enjoy, that's not something you want to move away from. I was never in a rush to get away from what people enjoyed.

I think all dancers are control freaks a bit. We just want to be in control of ourselves and our bodies. That's just what the ballet structure, I think, kind of puts inside of you.

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 began with dance, doing ballet at 3, then tap, jazz, modern. Then I sang in church choirs, learned how to play clarinet and drums, sang with rock bands and only then did I get into musical theatre.

I began to fear that the Graham work was not in lots of ways sufficient for me. I suppose it came about from looking at other dancing and being involved with the ballet - something about the air and the way she thought about dancing.

A young girl reached out to me to be her mentor one day, which I didn't really know anything about. What I did remember was what it was to be alone as an African-American dancer in the ballet world and wanting to connect with someone who looks like me.

Ballet is a closed world and very rigid; MGM was a fairyland. You'd walk down the lot, seeing all these fabulous movies being made with the greatest talent in the world sitting there. It was a dream to walk through that lot.

I grew up as a dancer, and music and dance are so closely tied, that in ballet class you're listening to all this classical music, and in modern class you're working with a live drummer. It was something that always made me feel really comfortable and I've had a connection to since the beginning.

I started Ballet at a very young age and I was captivated immediately. It became my voice, means to overcome those final barriers to expressing myself. Letting myself fly free. The more experience I have, the more I get to know myself.

When I would create a dance, I wouldn't have the luxury that ballet people do when they take a piece of music and impose a dance upon it. What we did in motion pictures was have a song and within that song try to elaborate. My usual method was to do what a writer does: get a plot.

I was a massive fan of Amy Winehouse growing up. I decided it would be a good idea to become Amy Winehouse with the beehive and ballet shoes. Six months into that, I looked into the mirror and decided I'd better be Mia.

At the ballet classes I took when I first came to New York, I would see great dancers like Cynthia Gregory and Lupe Serrano. I would look at them and study what they could do, and what I couldn't do. And then I'd think maybe they should try what I could do.

I've trained in dance for most of my life, but ballet was the thing I left behind the earliest because they felt like I didn't have the right body for it, and I didn't like that and never felt like I could be a part of that dance structure.

When I became a principal at the Royal Ballet it was my childhood goal, a dream and I became it at 19. And then I said 'what's next?' and I set myself a different goal at 19 to become an actor.

I'd really like to get to do some fighting, some martial arts training, because I think that would be really fun I do gymnastics and ballet, and I'm very, very into the physically acrobatic end of sport.

Back in high school, about two years ago, I was in this silly punk band called Ballet for Athletes. We were all trying to take it seriously, and then I realized that "punk" and "serious" aren't really two words you can put in the same sentence - at least, in my opinion.

I went to Westside School of Ballet in L.A. and I was climbing through the ranks. Then I got to pointe shoes and I was like, 'This is not cool, you guys. This is gonna be in textbooks, someday, along with Chinese foot-binding.' Anyway, it's not for me, so I got into doing different kinds of dance.

Since ballet has such a solid classical framework, everything is supposed to be a very specific way, so you learn to look at things with an eye towards perfection. But in acting, it isn't always necessarily good to be like that - really magical things can happen when it's unexpected and messy.

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?

Ballet is completely unnatural to the body, just being turned-out... it's not the way your body is supposed to function, so you actually train your body to be a different structure than you were born with.

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.

Kids see cooking as a creative outlet now, like soccer and ballet. It gives me hope that things like fast food, childhood obesity and the horrible state of school lunches can be addressed by kids and their parents.

Nicholas Hytner, who directed Center Stage, is a huge ballet fan. He was completely open, as was Bruce Beresford, to get our perspective. "No, we wouldn't do this. Yes, we would do that. That's not realistic." So, I feel like Center Stage did well in that respect.

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

Dad is a skilled athlete and runs his own football school for kids. While football is his entire life and he encouraged us to play, he still found time to take me to ballet and tennis lessons.

The best seat in the house often depends on the ballet. For instance, much of the first act of 'The Nutcracker' is domestic and small scale, so it's great to sit up close. But the second act features elaborate scenery and choreography, which are better to observe from a distance.

When my daughter Dixie gets out of school, I take her to ballet, soccer, or karate. Or if it's a free afternoon, we might bake together. I love our time together. There is nothing more important in my life than making her happy.

As I got older, I started to do it more and more, and I wanted to learn all of the different types. I grew up doing modern, so I wanted to learn ballet, tap, jazz, and African - just everything.

It's hard with ballet because your aesthetic really is important. It's different from acting and from film. Nobody wants to watch somebody who is sickly thin. And it's interesting because I have danced with people who are ill, have eating disorders, and a light goes off within them.

I grew up as a dancer, and music and dance are so closely tied that in ballet class, you're listening to all this classical music, and in modern class, you're working with a live drummer. It was something that always made me feel really comfortable, and I've had a connection to since the beginning.

I am trained, and I did do 'The Nutcracker' in its right form, but at the time, they told me I was black and I'd never be in 'Swan Lake.' I went through all those prejudices in the ballet community, and I still emerged wonderfully trained and found my way to Alvin Ailey where there were familiar faces.

Yeah, I shoot. I shot with my dad a little bit when I was little. He was a Marine, so it wasn't like he would take me to the ballet. We would go to a shooting range. It was the only thing he knew to teach his little girl how to do.

Russian culture is multifaceted and diverse. So if you want to understand, to feel Russia, then of course you need to read books, Tolstoy and Chekhov and Gogol and others. Listen to music. Tchaikovsky. Watch our classical ballet. But the most important thing is that you need to talk with people.

It is the best of all games for me. It frequently escapes from the pattern of sport and assumes the form of a virile ballet. It is purer than any dance because the actions of the players are not governed by music or crowded into a formula by a director. The movement is natural and unrehearsed and controlled only by the unexpected flight of the ball.

I was always the kid down the street who got the other kids to put on a show. But it was only when I was 19, and discovered ballet and contemporary dance, that I got interested in the fact that you could have a whole evening of dance - rather than just waiting for the dancers in a musical.

The average parent may, for example, plant an artist or fertilize a ballet dancer and end up with a certified public accountant. We cannot train children along chicken wire to make them grow in the right direction. Tying them to stakes is frowned upon, even in Massachusetts.

I got the part [in Into the Forest], I started taking ballet again to try to regain my strength back. I actually love that it was changed to Crystal Pite's modern dance. And I wouldn't even really call it modern dance because it feels like it's in its own genre.

American Ballet Theatre's rehearsal studios are at 890 Broadway, an old building where exposed pipes clank and hiss in uneven accompaniment to piano music. The high ceilings wear a toupee of dust. The wall paint peels like a newbie ballerina's toes.

Since babyhood, I've always evolved from one thing to another. My mother gave me ballet lessons at 6 as part of her enthusiasm for the arts and for life. We went to museums, to the theater. While her own talent was untapped, she worked for church causes.

Dance has been a driving force in my life for 25 years. From music videos and hip hop, to jazz and musical theater, to ballet and classic modern dance, I have had extensive exposure to a variety of techniques that inspire my own electric style.

I do as many fun activities as possible. A lot of hiking, beach bike riding and walking. And cardio barre, which is a dance-based workout at a ballet barre. It's a full-body workout for one hour on Monday, Wednesday and Friday in a studio.

I remember once saying in a television interview that the only things I hadn't been in were the opera and the ballet. Two days later, I got a call from Lord Harewood, of the English National Opera, saying "Would you like to be in 'Ariadne auf Naxos?'"

One of the first things I created was music for the Paris opera's ballet troupe. That was the first time that electronic music was played at the opera. I really like the relationship between the music and the choreography.

I love acting, but that's also kind of what I love about ballet - the acting. So, obviously, film is like an extension of that, which is amazing, but it's also something I can do a bit later on as well.

I like graceful and elegant partnering that gives an illusion of ease instead of emphasizing difficulty. I don't want to make something 'contemporary' or 'trendy,' because ballet doesn't progress on one track: it can branch out in many directions, and as Balanchine showed, there's always room for pure classicism and more subtle alterations of it.

In England, ballet is kind of closed. They are opening up a little bit, but it was always something not for the general public. So you don't get fame, like a football star or a film star. And if you don't get fame, you can't do other stuff.

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.

The world of women fascinates me, probably because my sister and I were always together as children in our mother's salon after school and after ballet classes. We used to talk about what we saw: the different ladies who would come in, all with their distinctive personalities.

I had seen the ballet of Swan Lake as a child but it was as an adult, when I saw a production featuring Erik Bruhn, that I first noticed how significant a part the ever-present threat of violence played. This juxtaposition of great beauty and grace with a backdrop of pure evil stayed with me for years.

Ballet is completely unnatural to the body, just being turned out... it's not the way your body is supposed to function, so you actually [...] train your body to be a different structure than you were born with.

Well, I took ballet for many, many years, so my whole childhood really revolved around dance class. I grew up around dance; my mother was a dancer.

I had seen the ballet of 'Swan Lake' as a child but it was as an adult, when I saw a production featuring Erik Bruhn, that I first noticed how significant a part the ever-present threat of violence played. This juxtaposition of great beauty and grace with a backdrop of pure evil stayed with me for years.

I went to the International Ballet competition when I was 15 or 16 and that was the first time I competed. I didn't get very far but it was the first time that I realized what I needed to do to become a dancer. I realized how hard it was.

In order to dance professionally, you have to start at a young age. No matter what, your muscle structure and your bones have to be groomed from a very young age. Nobody wakes up at 17 and decides to become a ballet dancer.