Quotes About Ballet

She walks like a ballerina in dance slippers, her feet as articulate as hands, a little vessel of grace moving out into the fog.

The prima ballerinas who taught me were far more scary than Gordon Ramsay. They'd scream at me and pull my legs and arms, so after them Gordon was a piece of cake.

'Petrushka' was not conceived as a children's ballet, even though it involves puppets. We're on the outer limits of what's child-appropriate here.

I wanted to give people - which is fairly bizarre considering my whole life is contemporary dance really - I wanted to give people a really fulfilling sense that they had seen a white classical ballet - in a very pure form.

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.

After I finished 'Center Stage,' I went back to San Francisco, and I danced for seven seasons with the San Francisco Ballet.

I was in a ballet company, and I auditioned for Bob Alton, a top choreographer at MGM. He sent me to see Arthur Freed, who offered me a seven-year contract.

They wouldn't understand. In the desert, they were endlessly desert. Growing things performed no green ballet for them.

I remember my dreams when I was a junior soloist. 'Oh, I hope I don't end here,' I thought. 'I want to do the ballerina in 'Scotch Symphony.' I don't want to be the little Scotch girl.' And I actually went beyond my wildest dreams. I worked with Balanchine. I had ballets choreographed for me.

At 11, I went to Misha's school for two summers. So when I wasn't in that school, I was taking classes at David Howard or Robert Denver's studios - kind of legendary places - and there was one summer where Alexander Godunov sort of took me under his wing; the memory's a little murky, but I felt as if I was his project for those weeks.

The ballet world is so competitive, and for no reason. It's not a sport. It's an art. There's no winner.

For Russians, to whom Pushkin's poem 'Eugene Onegin' is sacred text, the ballet's story and personae are as familiar and filled with meaning as, for instance, 'Romeo' and 'Hamlet' are for us. Russians know whole stretches of it by heart, the way we know Shakespeare and Italians know Dante.

I am just so thankful that my mom was a fantastic mom. She wasn't a stage mother; she didn't push me. She was happy if I was happy. We are so different. I was very shy; my mom did all the talking. She was my strength. She never expected that I would be this ballerina.

For a long time everyone had a stereotype of ballet that it was easy and that we were just prancing around. But thanks to the Internet, and being able to share live performances and broadcast them to the world so that everyone can experience the ballet, I think it's inspiring people we wouldn't normally be able to reach.

I grew up without any money, but the one thing that we did was sit up in the gods to watch the ballet.

If they opened things up and I could build a luxury condominium in Vedado, I would sell them in two hours here in Miami. Cubans in Miami would be the first to buy. In Miami, 80 percent of the people we sell to are foreigners. Havana is a city very similar to Miami... There's good music, good theater, good ballet.

I grew up in the theater and danced ballet atrociously.

I announced at the dinner table when I was 11 that I wanted to be a ballet dancer. But my goal changed to musical theater after the choreographer Robert Joffrey saw me perform while I was on scholarship at the San Francisco Ballet School.

I am both proud and honored to be on the Board of Directors for the Texas Ballet Theater.

I was a ballet dancer and that kind of bled into musical theater. I was constantly in rehearsal for one thing or another.

Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It's part ballet. It's part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage.

The last time I had to make a career decision, I was 17. I could have gone to Ballet Theatre or National Ballet of Canada. There were options. But as I became exposed to the Robbins repertoire, I realized that there was a living genius in the house.

It's very difficult for me to do fund raising for my own organization if I'm working for other companies because sponsors will say, 'Well, hey, man, if she's doing a ballet for Ballet Theatre, we'll give money to Ballet Theatre.'

Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned.