Quotes About Ballets

The ballets you do make you into the final product you are. And I had extraordinary partners.

Most ballets are more interesting than most men.

I remember that my mother used to take me to see ballets, especially if there were black people in them.

Mr. Balanchine wanted me to be myself. He didn't want me to look like anyone else. I love teaching our company dancers the Balanchine ballets. I try to give them what was passed down to me and what I learned from him. They dance it so beautifully. It also keeps me close to Mr. Balanchine. He's with me every single day.

I like dramatic ballets, particularly if they're ballets in which I have a chance to go from one extreme of style or characterization to another.

I love all of the ballets that have a really strong story in them where I get to play a character. I don't enjoy the ones that are more technical without a story line and it's just me on stage dancing.

I cherish the ballets made for myself by Mr. Balanchine. He never lost his temper. He was quiet, humble, the genius of the 20th century.

Dancing and ballets would undoubtedly take on a new lease on life, if the customs established by a spirit of fear and jealousy did not in some way close the path of glory.

What guarantees - or at least semi-guarantees - good ballets is good choreographers, and they are thin on the ground.

I like new ballets because they're totally new. As you get older, new experiences are harder and harder to come by, so it's pretty great to have a new experience.

There's the tradition of the 19th-century ballets, and the 20th century has had a difficult time with that tradition. And it's had a difficult time with many components of the Romantic imagination because of modernism.

There are some ballets you can do for a long time. With others, you have to know when to stop. Some are very destructive. Forsythe's choreography pushes dancers to the extreme. That's why it's best to vary. That way, you break your body a little bit in different places, but not a lot in one place.

When you dance, it takes a lot of stamina, but it never seemed like work 'cause I was doing something that I so loved doing. It was always a joy. And you know, to have beautiful ballets made specially for you is such an honor. I always said it was better than diamonds.

I think that story ballets, as great as they might sell, they're a really dated and awkward medium to tell stories through. I think there needs to be an updated or different approach to storytelling in dance. There needs to be less of a separation between the storytelling and the dancing.

I have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer's work is.