Quotes About Ballet

There's nothing like the force and challenge of a new ballet to galvanize everyone involved in bringing it to life.

The focus of our family life was homework and what was for dinner; getting to ballet rehearsal and getting my brother to soccer.

And it is always Easter Sunday at the New York City Ballet. It is always coming back to life. Not even coming back to life - it lives in the constant present.

Ballet is always about the realm of possibilities, the realm of what the human body can do, what the human spirit can do. And it's about listening, it's about listening to remarkable music and how we respond to that.

Barringer, Janice, and Sarah Schlesinger. The Pointe Book: Shoes, Training & Technique . Hightstown, NJ: Princeton Book Company, 1998, 2004.

Two planets of comparable size in an endless falling ballet around each other and their sun made for challenging close orbits, and Perceval was all too aware of the fragility of her old and battered world.

My life isn't theories and formulae. It's part instinct, part common sense. Logic is as good a word as any, and I've absorbed what logic I have from everything and everyone… from my mother, from training as a ballet dancer, from Vogue magazine, from the laws of life and health and nature.

Ballet dancers have the opposite problem to most people in that, because of their excessive flexibility, their physical capacity outstrips their intellectual consciousness.

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 began dancing when I was 7 years old. I was told that I had the perfect ballet dancer's body and had these crazy high arches in my feet that resulted in an amazing point. Ballet was very disciplined and, frankly, a little boring, so I eventually transitioned to gymnastics. I loved that, although I never reached a competitive level.

I think most people think of ballerinas as kind of either as a fairytale, far-away thing that's really not attainable, something they can't grasp, or they think of them as European or Russian and kind of their nose up in the air. So, it's cool for me to, like, sit with them and for them to really see themselves as me.

What's always interested me the most about ballet is it's this great opportunity for many different artistic mediums to come together to create a cohesive experience.

Ballet is such a disciplined craft and it has given me a good grounding.

I didn't grow up on dance class. I was always natural. I've been in the industry since I was eight and I've always had a choreographer since then. But I never really took ballet or anything like that.

I was a ballet dancer growing up and that's what I was convinced I would be.

Ballet can be grueling, for sure, but it gives you a certain discipline.

I take ballet class as often as possible - up to 5 times a week - and try to go to the gym on the days that I don't take class. I also do a floor barre/Pilates mat class almost everyday.

I love ballet, and it's a little boring for me to go to the gym because I'm used to the dancing discipline - it's really hard but much more fun.

The ballet makes us look at those bodies, it makes us listen to that music, it makes us wonder at the geometry, of the way they come together. The way that extraordinary space is controlled and given such emotional force.

God comes to us in theater in the way we communicate with each other, whether it be a symphony orchestra, or a wonderful ballet, or a beautiful painting, or a play. It's a way of expressing our humanity.

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.

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.

I think 'Ballet Shoes' was a very pivotal role for me. I was about 14 then, and it was an incredible cast: Eileen Atkins, Victoria Wood, Emilia Fox, Harriet Walters. All these incredible women.

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.