The worst thing about me is my toes. I've thick joints from wearing pointe ballet shoes - I went to a dance school from the age of 11 and danced every day.
My dancing days are past.
As a kid, I had a lot of energy; but the ballet lessons made me calm - this pleased my mother.
To handle paint the way Pollock did, you need the muscularity of a ballet dancer.
If you looked at my feet, you would know for sure that I used to do ballet. They're completely destroyed and ripped up.
Bel canto is to opera what pole-vaulting is to ballet.
Ballet really lends itself to that because there's such a sense of ritual, with wrapping the shoes every day and preparing new shoes for every performance. It's such a process. It's almost religious, in nature.
As a child I often wondered whether I would be allowed to live such moments- to inhabit the slow, majestic ballet of the snowflakes, to be released at last from the dreary frenzy of time. Is that what it feels to be naked? All one's clothes are gone, yet one's mind is overladen with finery.
Physical fears change and shift depending on the role and depending on the mindset I'm in.
It takes a lot of money to be a part of the ballet world. Both the training and the supplies are expensive, the shoes, the leotards and the tights.
I don't feel like my life is that of a superstar! Every day I wake up, I take the train, I go to my ballet class. My everyday life is pretty normal.
In a ballet company, you're trying to create unison and uniform when you're in a cour de ballet.
Ballet is number one, everything else is scheduled in the small windows when I'm not in the studio taking class, rehearsing, on stage or on tour.
I want to share the ballet world with everyone.
When I was a child, I went to stage school three times a week in the evenings - singing, ballet, tap, modern and acting, and I loved it.
I used to love ballet and I did it really, really intensely. But it came so much about achieving physical perfection, which when I was 14 was a big deal.
Flawless . . . Tightly choreographed . . . Shipstead gains entry into exclusive worlds and trains her opera glasses on private social rituals, as well as behind-the-scenes hanky panky . . . Similar to classic ballet, the power of Astonish Me arises out of the pairing of a melodramatic storyline with scrupulously executed range of movement . . . Shipstead sweeps you into this insider world of sweat, narcissism, and short-lived magic . . . Transcendent.
In ballet, I felt that no matter how good I was, if I didn't have the right body type or if I didn't fit a certain mold there was nothing I could do.
The best physique I ever had was when I was ballet dancing.
I do ballet and pointe work. I also do tap, commercial jazz and technical jazz, freestyle street dancing.
I need a big wave to really excel. The smaller stuff is a bit like...ballet for me.
I was a ballerina for a good 12 years. When I was 15 I had to stop. It wasn't a choice, it was an injury that prevented me from going forward in ballet unfortunately. Well, fortunately because I wouldn't be doing what I am doing now if that had not happened.
The noble entitlement bespeaks an élan, a certain type of relationship with your partner. It means formidable technique not displayed lightly. The excitement comes from elegance.
In the world of classical ballet there are only a handful of story ballets, so getting a new one is cause for excitement.
There's nothing like the force and challenge of a new ballet to galvanize everyone involved in bringing it to life.
