Robert Gottlieb Quotes & Sayings

Raimund Hoghe is a little man with a spinal deformity who was once Pina Bausch's dramaturge. — Robert Gottlieb

Just as I was turning fifteen, in the spring of 1946, my parents took me to see 'The Glass Menagerie,' well into its year-long run. I had seen a number of shows on Broadway by then, but nothing like this - because there was nothing like this on Broadway. — Robert Gottlieb

Most writers are vulnerable and insecure, and Kay Graham was more so than most. — Robert Gottlieb

'Ocean's Kingdom' is a fairy story with no subtext, no resonance - it's not about anything except its water-logged plot. — Robert Gottlieb

Charles Dickens left us fifteen novels, and in an ideal world, everyone would read all of them. — Robert Gottlieb

Almost the first thing you see after entering the Houdini exhibition at the Jewish Museum is a large-screen film of Harry Houdini hanging by his ankles upside-down from a tall building, high over a sea of men in fedoras, and thrashing his way out of a straitjacket. — Robert Gottlieb

I was the only child, and I know my father had certain thoughts about me. He was a lawyer and extremely literary, but he would have been much happier if I had wanted to be a lawyer, a scientist, an engineer. But what I wanted to do was read. — Robert Gottlieb

The first movement ballerina should be a paradigm of strength and authority. — Robert Gottlieb

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

With literary fiction, generally a film maker falls in love with a book. In commercial fiction, it's a producer or studio falling in love with a book they can make into a movie with worldwide appeal. — Robert Gottlieb

After all these years of saying the same thing about the Alvin Ailey company - terrific dancers, awful repertory - I'm finally accepting the inevitable: I'm not going to change my mind, and they're not going to change their ways. And why should they, given their juggernaut success all over the world? — Robert Gottlieb

Twyla Tharp set her sights on ballet, and ballet, hungry for major talent, succumbed. — Robert Gottlieb

What really matters is that 'Black Swan' deploys and exaggerates all the cliches of earlier ballet movies, especially 'The Red Shoes,' another tale of a ballerina driven mad and suicidal. — Robert Gottlieb

Shakespeare has always been up for grabs, and choreographers have every right to use him any way they choose. — Robert Gottlieb

Classics are constantly being re-imagined and transformed, and the originals are none the worse for it; they endure. — Robert Gottlieb

How the English love playing at being naughty boys! — Robert Gottlieb

'Black Swan' does what Hollywood movies have always done - it spends its energies on getting some surface things right while getting everything important wrong. Darren Aronofsky, the director, applies the same techniques and the same sensibility here as he did with 'The Wrestler,' only with a prettier protagonist. — Robert Gottlieb

A lot of people have a lot of faith in Karole Armitage. They see her as bold, inventive, indefatigable. 'America isn't working out? There's always Europe. Ballet? No? Go modern. Keep going! Show 'em!' — Robert Gottlieb

Schumann's 'Quintet in E flat for Piano and Strings' is one of the sublime moments in Romantic music. — Robert Gottlieb

Every great dance company, even when it seems poised in perfect balance, needs constant renewal of both repertory and performers. — Robert Gottlieb

There is no consolation for anyone in the Scott Peterson story, and no final illumination. — Robert Gottlieb

Audiences love Paul Taylor, and so do I. Not everything, and not always, but year in, year out, he gives me more concentrated pleasure than I get from any other dance company. — Robert Gottlieb

'Neverwhere,' by Benjamin Millepied, is set to his favorite composer, Nico Muhly. — Robert Gottlieb

Some readers took 'Heaven's My Destination' as a satire on Christianity and the Midwest, but today it reads like a loving comedy. — Robert Gottlieb

You may feel that Peter Martins' 'Beauty' is too compressed and inexpressive, but it's loyal to the text. — Robert Gottlieb

Many people say to me, particularly about my dance writing, 'It sounds just like you.' But it sounds just like me after I've made it sound like me. — Robert Gottlieb

We know how Merce Cunningham works and how he thinks - we've been told, over and over again, by him and by others. — Robert Gottlieb

Without a Prospero-Caliban relationship to balance the Prospero-Ariel one, 'The Tempest' loses much of its resonance. — Robert Gottlieb

You don't have to be a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute to figure out that when you title a memoir of your parents 'Them,' you're performing an act of distancing. — Robert Gottlieb

At a certain point, you have to face the fact that you've turned into an old fart. — Robert Gottlieb

How do you rate works of genius? Partly by personal inclination, partly by accepted wisdom, partly by popularity. — Robert Gottlieb

What 'War and Peace' is to the novel and 'Hamlet' is to the theater, Swan Lake' is to ballet - that is, the name which to many people stands for and sums up an art form. — Robert Gottlieb

Wayne McGregor's 'Dyad 1929' is a good example of this capable British choreographer's work. — Robert Gottlieb

Despite the rigid classicism of the famous Paris Opera school and company, the French have done more than their share to unmoor la Danse from its traditions and standards. — Robert Gottlieb

The first time the Kirov ballet was seen in America was on Sept. 11, 1961. The ballet was 'Swan Lake.' The ballerina was Inna Zubkovskaya. The place was the old Met, on what must have been one of the hottest nights of the year, and there was no air-conditioning. — Robert Gottlieb

One of the eternal mysteries of ballet is how untalented choreographers find backers for their work, and then find good dancers to perform in it. Is it irresistible charm? Chutzpah? Pure determination? Blackmail? Or are so many supposedly knowledgeable people just plain blind? — Robert Gottlieb

Choreographers, historically, are born, not made - their talents drive them to it. — Robert Gottlieb

Why movie and dance critics are taking 'The Company' seriously, I can't imagine. Are they impressed by Altman's reputation and naive sincerity? By the fluid semi-documentary approach? — Robert Gottlieb

'Eclipse' is overlong and overly self-conscious, but it isn't a fake or a zero; it just gets exhausting. It raises a crucial question: 'When does Concept morph into Gimmick?' — Robert Gottlieb

Either 'Deuce Coupe' has aged badly, or I have. I suspect it's the latter. — Robert Gottlieb

Ballerinas are often divided into three categories: jumpers, turners and balancers. — Robert Gottlieb

The mystery of Christopher Wheeldon deepens. Yes, he's the most talented of the younger ballet choreographers - indeed, where's the competition? Yes, he's particularly good at nurturing dancers and identifying their essential qualities. — Robert Gottlieb

How can educated and sophisticated viewers react so differently to a work of art? Is it just Kulture Klash? No, since most of the time there's no Klash at all. On the occasions when we disagree, it may be because we're looking for different things in dance. — Robert Gottlieb

I have fixed more sentences than most people have read in their lives. — Robert Gottlieb

In 1998, Vanity Fair asked me to write a big piece for them on the 50th anniversary of the New York City Ballet. My life, to a great extent, had been spent at and with the New York City Ballet, and I decided to try it. It was very scary, writing about something I loved so much and had such strong opinions about. — Robert Gottlieb

Ladies: You have to support an infant with a hand under its head. — Robert Gottlieb

Editing requires you to be always open, always responding. It is very important, for example, not to allow yourself to want the writer to write a certain kind of book. Sometimes that's hard. — Robert Gottlieb

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. — Robert Gottlieb

'The Sleeping Beauty' is the greatest, most challenging and most vulnerable of classical ballets. Everything can go wrong with it, and all too often, everything does. — Robert Gottlieb

Dance Theatre of Harlem has done a lot of good things well, a lot of good things badly, and a lot of bad things - it doesn't matter how. — Robert Gottlieb

Twyla Tharp is not going to take orders from anyone, not even Mozart! — Robert Gottlieb

If you are a good editor, your relationship with every writer is different. — Robert Gottlieb

What makes a publishing house great? The easy answer is the consistency with which it produces books of value over a lengthy period of time. — Robert Gottlieb

Soledad Barrio is clearly a master - of thrilling steps and passionate movement. She stalks, she circles, she struts, she snaps her head - her feet drill the stage. — Robert Gottlieb

In Georgia, apparently, men are men and women are women - at least in their folk dance. — Robert Gottlieb

'Empty Moves' is elegantly and coolly inventive. Two pairs of dancers shadow each other in slow, deliberate rearrangements and manipulations of legs and torsos, only occasionally switching partners or breaking free of the formal patterning. — Robert Gottlieb

The finest chroniclers of the great and the near-great have often been courtiers - the Duc de Saint-Simon, for instance, or Lady Murasaki. — Robert Gottlieb

If you like being battered, the work of Savion Glover - one-time child prodigy - should be up your alley. I don't, and it isn't up mine. — Robert Gottlieb

I can almost always read a new manuscript overnight. — Robert Gottlieb

Ballet Hispanico is a mixture of ethnic, ballet, social, jazz - you name it, it's doing it. The company has been going strong for more than 20 years, and you can see why: It may not be refined, but it's full of beans. — Robert Gottlieb

With its vastly complicated plot and its immense cast of characters swirling around the case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce that has been grinding away in the Court of Chancery for decades, 'Bleak House' is, for many readers, Dickens's greatest novel. — Robert Gottlieb

'Eclipse' is a concept piece, and its concept centers on 36 large light bulbs strung from above in a geometrical pattern and at different heights, some of them at times down below the dancers' chest level. — Robert Gottlieb

Tolstoy may be right about happy and unhappy families, but in ballet, it works the opposite way: All good ballets are different from each other and all bad ones are alike, at least in one crucial respect - they're all empty. — Robert Gottlieb

Yes, bad or mediocre ballets can be useful to the dancers and temporarily fun for the audience, but in the long run, the lowering of standards can only erode the art form we all love. — Robert Gottlieb

'The Leaves Are Fading' had something of a vogue when Antony Tudor made it in 1975, largely because of Gelsey Kirkland's ravishing performance. — Robert Gottlieb

'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is one of George Balanchine's greatest creations - and one of the greatest of all story ballets. — Robert Gottlieb

'Paquita' has a patchy history, beginning in 1846, and a patchy plot. — Robert Gottlieb

It's often the case that the most strained moments in books are the very beginning and the very end - the getting in and the getting out. The ending, especially: it's awkward, as if the writer doesn't know when the book is over and nervously says it all again. — Robert Gottlieb

We see a new generation of Russian authors who are not divided from their Western contemporaries either culturally or philosophically. — Robert Gottlieb

The cows in Stella Gibbons's immortal 'Cold Comfort Farm' are named Graceless, Aimless, Feckless and Pointless, and that more or less is the verdict on 'Ocean's Kingdom,' the wildly hyped and wildly uninteresting collaboration between Peter Martins and Paul McCartney. — Robert Gottlieb

Martha Graham, along with George Balanchine, is one of the two commanding figures in 20th-century American dance. For those much younger than I am, her genius as a performer will have to be taken on faith - and on the always-suspect evidence of film. What will last, if things go well, is her genius as a choreographer, as a woman of the theater. — Robert Gottlieb

Remember: TV is a format, film is a format, and books are a format. — Robert Gottlieb

I have no problem selling ebooks for authors directly as an agent, but partnering with them is another matter. — Robert Gottlieb

There are a few writers whose lives and personalities are so large, so fascinating, that there's no such thing as a boring biography of them - you can read every new one that comes along, good or bad, and be caught up in the story all over again. — Robert Gottlieb

Diana Vishneva is not only a magnificent dancer but a magnificent actress - no one works harder or understands more. — Robert Gottlieb

I can't remember how many years it's been since I last saw a David Parsons program or what I saw whenever it was, but that isn't surprising, since I can't really remember the first half of a David Parsons program while I'm watching the second half. — Robert Gottlieb

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. — Robert Gottlieb

It's always fascinating - and sometimes a little disquieting - when two first-rate critics violently disagree. — Robert Gottlieb

I don't like writing - it's so difficult to say what you mean. It's much easier to edit other people's writing and help them say what they mean. — Robert Gottlieb

City Ballet has to develop choreographers of stature and a new approach to coaching before everything we value about it fades away and, in the great tradition of the Cheshire Cat, there's nothing left but Peter Martins' smile. — Robert Gottlieb

Ballet in September used to be dead as a dodo. Now, with City Ballet's ingenious decision to give us four weeks of repertory in the early fall, having cut down on the relentlessly long spring season when dancers, critics and audiences droop on the vine, we wake up after the dog days of August with something to look at. — Robert Gottlieb

The Kirov is a great ballet company because it has so many terrific dancers, but it doesn't always know what to do with them. — Robert Gottlieb

As for the once-revolutionary 'Agon,' after more than half a century, its lessons and revelations have been so absorbed into the language of ballet that it now seems almost conventional. — Robert Gottlieb

As ye sow, so shall ye reap. When a ballet company spends a lot of money on gimmicky pieces, it's stuck with them for a while - they have to earn their keep. — Robert Gottlieb

For me, the real pleasure in writing is in having an excuse to pursue my curiosity about people who have meant something to me. — Robert Gottlieb

You can approach 'The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death' in a variety or combination of ways: as a startlingly eccentric hobby; as a series of unresolved murder mysteries; as the manifestation of one woman's peculiar psychic life; as a lesson in forensics; as a metaphor for the fate of women; as a photographic study. — Robert Gottlieb

Has there ever been a dance career with more ups and downs than Twyla Tharp's? Or with more varied ambitions? Or larger ambition? — Robert Gottlieb

Acting has changed since the nineteen-forties. — Robert Gottlieb

'Beloved Renegade' is a meditation on Walt Whitman, on tenderness, on dying. — Robert Gottlieb

When I was at Cambridge in the early fifties, there was a school nearby for training Army officers in Russian, and some imaginative genius came up with the idea of putting on Russian plays with the students to improve their language skills. — Robert Gottlieb

The mysteries and scandals of the Kremlin are nothing compared to the mysteries and scandals of the Bolshoi. — Robert Gottlieb

I hated Matthew Bourne's 'Swan Lake' when it first turned up, and then when it was televised, and then when it returned. — Robert Gottlieb

In traditional 'Swan Lakes,' it's Prince Siegfried's 21st-birthday celebration, his coming-of-age. The entire court, from his mother the Queen on down, is on hand. — Robert Gottlieb

Nothing is harder to create than brilliant comic ballets, except maybe brilliant full-evening comic ballets. — Robert Gottlieb

The eternal and uneasy relationship between ballet and modern dance endures, but radically altered in tone and intensity. — Robert Gottlieb

'Porgy and Bess' has never been thought of as a dance show, and yet it's filled with dance. It uses dance to punctuate the action, or as background, or as atmosphere; even when it's front and center, it isn't crucial. — Robert Gottlieb

You have to surrender to a book. If you do, when something in it seems to be going askew, you are wounded. The more you have surrendered to a book, the more jarring its errors appear. — Robert Gottlieb

In today's world, it never looks good when you're suing somebody who earned $20,000 for writing a book over a period of a year or two. — Robert Gottlieb

When December comes, can 'The Nutcracker' be far behind? No, it can't - not in America, anyway. — Robert Gottlieb

I can't claim to 'understand' 'Byzantium,' if any dance work can be 'understood,' but whenever I see it, I sense that it's charged with meaning. — Robert Gottlieb