Ballet Quotes - Page 7

Great art is never perfect; perfect art is never great.

Ballet is good, because it makes you stand up tall.

Heaven help the American-born boy with a talent for ballet.

I would like to tell all dancers to forget themselves and the desire for self display. They must become completely absorbed in the dance. Even in a classical variation there should never be any thought of a dancer doing a variation--he should become identified with it.

The deep art... That's the part that has to be guarded like a miser would his money... Like a dope addict would his dope... Like a lover with their love.

Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible

Dancing for the length of time that I did, it centered me in such a way to be really in tune with my body, and I just feel like I'm physically able to do things because of my ballet background. Without ballet, I don't think I'd look graceful at all on screen.

I had rather be a kitten and cry mew Than one of these same metre ballet-mongers.

Even though I am a professional, and I know what the steps are, I don't quite know how I'm going to do them, because I haven't lived that moment yet. I always feel very insecure and I get very excited.

In fact, ballet companies did not exist in the Midwest when I was a child.

I didn't care too much for ballet, because you had to be more disciplined, and you sort of looked like everyone else. It required a certain kind of conformity that I didn't feel like I wanted to do.

When you are on stage, you don't see faces. The lights are in your eyes and you see just this black void out in front of you. And yet you know there is life out there, and you have to get your message across.

Although we do come from a silent profession, it is important for us to verbalize what we want to say. (As I tell my students): you could love someone all your life, but if you never say it how are they going to know? There comes a point when you have to say what you mean, which makes you scream louder when you dance.

My sisters did ballet when we were younger and I remember sitting in the car with my dad and going 'can we hurry up and go surfing!?, I'm sick of waiting for my sisters and their ballet classes.'

I deliberately made an effort not to become an expert on the ballet.

Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery.

When movement becomes ecstatic, then this is dance. When the movement is so total there is no ego, then it is dance.

I believe that I definitely developed into a refined and graceful woman due to ballet. It has shaped me in every way.

My career came together very quickly. I only trained for four years before I became a professional, so I didn't have a lot of time to sit back and be inspired before I took my first ballet class.

I took several years of dance lessons that included ballet, tap and jazz. They helped a great deal with body control, balance, a sense of rhythm, and timing.

And then he danced,-all foreigners excel the serious Angels in the eloquence of pantomime;-he danced, I say, right well, with emphasis, and a'so with good sense-a thing in footing indispensable: he danced without theatrical pretence, not like a ballet-master in the van of his drill'd nymphs, but like a gentleman.

The domain of the ballet dancer is not earth but air.

Wrestling is ballet with violence.

No matter the style, the farther one goes the more obstacles increase, and the more distant appears the object it is desired to attain. Again, the most strenuous labor affords the greatest artists but a disquieting gleam which only reveals their inadequacy, while the self-satisfied ignoramus surrounded by the deepest gloom flatters himself that he has nothing more to learn.

Never excuse yourself.