Quotes & Sayings About Balanchine

I don't have a past. I have a continuous present. The past is part of the present, just as the future is. We exist in time. — George Balanchine

I had to learn that slower is faster. If you practice every day with patience and correctness, you will get there. It's like preparing for a jump. You can't rush. You must summon the appropriate energy with split-second timing and have an understanding of purpose to get up in the air. It requires training, confidence and mental effort. You can't have a vocabulary without the alphabet. Balanchine used to say, "Do you want to be a poet of gesture or do you want to be a physical entity?" — Edward Villella

If Balanchine had any secret, it was one that has endured through two hundred years of classical ballet. It is that dancing correctly in three dimensions, on the music, creates the fourth dimension of meaning. — Arlene Croce

The pointes for girls, I always say, have to be like an elephant's trunk; strong and yet flexible and soft. — George Balanchine

I didn't know if I could act, but I knew I could be a great ballet dancer, and Balanchine put out the carpet for me. — Jacques D'Amboise

Look at where I lived! Four blocks from Lincoln Center. I used to play in the fountain. And then I started taking dance lessons. I was in 'The Nutcracker' for the N.Y. City Ballet when I was 8 and dancing in 'The Firebird' for George Balanchine when I was 9. Believe me, that's something you don't ever forget. — Diane Paulus

Put a man and a girl on stage and there is already a story; a man and two girls, there's already a plot. — George Balanchine

I remember my dreams when I was a junior soloist. 'Oh, I hope I don't end here,' I thought. 'I want to do the ballerina in 'Scotch Symphony.' I don't want to be the little Scotch girl.' And I actually went beyond my wildest dreams. I worked with Balanchine. I had ballets choreographed for me. — Patricia McBride

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. — Patricia McBride

I could never make a ballet by wrinkling my brow and concentrating. If you set out deliberately to make a masterpiece, how will you ever get it finished? — George Balanchine

Dance is music made visible — George Balanchine

I can always invent movement, and sometimes it can be fitted into the right place, but that is not choreography. It is the music that dictates the whole shape of the work. I do not believe in the permanence of anything in ballet save the purely classical. — George Balanchine

I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance. — George Balanchine

Ballet will speak for itself. About itself. — George Balanchine

What are you waiting for? What are you saving for? Now is all there is. — George Balanchine

One is born to be a great dancer. — George Balanchine

They are poets of gesture. — George Balanchine

Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned. — George Balanchine

Someone once said that dancers work just as hard as policeman, always alert, always tense. But i dont agree with that because policeman don't have to look beautiful at the same time * — George Balanchine

I'm born originally in Toronto, and I have what I call my 'Fame' story. I took a Greyhound bus and went to Alvin Ailey and received Dunham, Horton, Graham technique there, but I could never take my eyes off of Balanchine doing 'Nutcracker'; to me he's the best who ever did it. — Laurieann Gibson

There was a stage when Balanchine and I didn't talk. I was trying to develop my classical technique as opposed to the fast-track technique that he was pushing. We were very quiet with each other. But after two years he saw what I was doing and sent messages through other people that, yes, this is good. — Gelsey Kirkland

First comes the sweat. Then comes the beauty if you're very lucky and have said your prayers. — George Balanchine

My actual daddy used to say that if you didn't let some things go, you'd spend your whole life fighting -Anya/Mr. Balanchine — Gabrielle Zevin

Storyless is not abstract. Two dancers on the stage are enough material for a story; for me, they are already a story in themselves — George Balanchine

Ballet dancing is arduous, strenuous activity. Students are engaged in physical training that rivals the training Olympic athletes undergo. At the same time, they strive for physical perfection not for the prowess alone but as a way of achieving the means necessary to express the pure nature of their art. — George Balanchine

God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it - from what I see, from what the dancers can do, from what others do. — George Balanchine

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

Your eyes is camera and your brain is a file cabinet. — George Balanchine

Mr. Balanchine was a great gentleman, and he loved his dancers. He was devoted to his company. He came to the ballet every night, and his presence was felt. It was like the whole company was dancing for him. And if he liked you, he trusted you to be yourself. He didn't try to change you and make you into something you were not. — Patricia McBride

The woman's function is to fascinate men. — George Balanchine

See the music, hear the dance. — George Balanchine

Why are you stingy with yourselves? Why are you holding back? What are you saving for - for another time? There are no other times. There is only now. Right now. — George Balanchine

We must first realize that dancing is an absolutely independent art, not merely a secondary accompanying one. I believe that it is one of the great arts ... The important thing in ballet is the movement itself. A ballet may contain a story, but the visual spectacle ... is the essential element. The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they reach the audience through the eye. It's the illusion created which convinces the audience, much as it is with the work of a magician. — George Balanchine

I am a cloud - in trousers. — George Balanchine

For (strange as it may sound to many people, who tend to think of critics as being motivated by the lower emotions: envy, disdain, contempt even) critics are, above all, people who are in love with beautiful things, and who worry that those things will get broken. What motivates so many of us to write in the first place is, to begin with, a great passion for a subject (Tennessee Williams, Balanchine, jazz, the twentieth-century novel, whatever) that we find beautiful; and, then, a kind of corresponding anxiety about the fragility of that beauty. — Daniel Mendelsohn

My muse must come to me on union time. — George Balanchine

If you don't feel challenged, it's because you're not doing enough. Ballet should never feel comfortable. Comfortable is lazy! If you're comfortable when you dance, you're not pushing yourself hard enough. 100 % is not enough. You have to give 200%. One tendu takes years of hard work and will never be perfect. Everything in ballet is a challenge. — George Balanchine

The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener. — George Balanchine

I never studied with Balanchine, but his work was very important to me. — Twyla Tharp

Music must be seen, and dance must be heard — George Balanchine

Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history. — Susan Sontag

I felt that Balanchine was my father towards me. He was the person I most admired and looked up to. — Patricia McBride

Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays. — George Balanchine

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

In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell ... we can't dance synonyms. — George Balanchine

In the beginning, he taught you how to hold your fingers, use your head, hold your shoulders, how you glissade, bourre - the exact way he wanted you to do the steps. It was relearning the whole Balanchine technique. — Patricia McBride

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. — Patricia McBride

I have no literary approach - except to literature. — George Balanchine

I cannot move, I cannot even want to move, unless I hear the music first. — George Balanchine

In my ballets, woman is first. Men are consorts. God made men to sing the praises of women. They are not equal to men: They are better. — George Balanchine

One is born to be a dancer. No teacher can work miracles, nor will years of training make a good dancer of an untalented pupil. One may be able to acquire a certain technical facility, but no one can ever 'acquire an exceptional talent.' I have never prided myself on having an unusually gifted pupil. A Pavlova is no one's pupil but God's. — George Balanchine

Choreography is simpler than you think. Just go and do, and don't think so much about it. Just make something interesting. — George Balanchine

It's like the time capsule with everything in it. Or like the seed that when you plant it, becomes the enormous tree with leaves and fruit. Everybody was in that little seed, and so everything can open. The tree of dance is like that. It just takes a long, long time to blossom. — George Balanchine

The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself. — George Balanchine

Ballet is important and significant - yes. But first of all, it is a pleasure. — George Balanchine

At age 14, coming to the U.S., all I knew was American Ballet Theatre, Baryshnikov, Nureyev, and some of the European companies. I barely knew anything about Balanchine. — Carla Korbes

I think Balanchine and Robbins talk to God and when I call, he's out to lunch. — Bob Fosse

Theo nodded slowly. "You love Balanchine chocolate like I love cacao."
"I wouldn't say love, Theo."
"No, you speak the truth. Love isn't right. It isn't right for me either. Sometimes I hate cacao." Theo looked at me. "You don't love Balanchine chocolate. You are Balanchine chocolate. — Gabrielle Zevin

I've got more energy now than when I was younger because I know exactly what I want to do. — George Balanchine