Ballet Dance Quotes & Sayings

I did grow up in France, and even though I didn't go to the school or dance with the Paris Opera Ballet, I absorbed similar ideas in my training. I understand the scale of a big company. I danced for one for almost 20 years. — Benjamin Millepied

I do take class because I still dance, and yes, I do slip into class with the Royal Ballet from time to time. — Deborah Bull

I wanted to give people - which is fairly bizarre considering my whole life is contemporary dance really - I wanted to give people a really fulfilling sense that they had seen a white classical ballet - in a very pure form. — Graeme Murphy

It's okay to dress up like another person, but never try to be someone else. Just try to be yourself, because that's what makes you special. Oh, and watch out if a dragon ever starts to dance ballet. — Jeff Hutchins

I went to Indiana University for college for a couple of years where I double majored in dance and journalism, and after my sophomore year there, I went to the San Francisco Ballet school for the summer, but then they offered me a scholarship to stay for the year. That's where I danced after the year they offered me a contract with the company. — Joan Chen

Every dance you make belongs to you. It is part of your collection. When you think of it like that, you'll want to make your next routine the best you've ever made! — Torron-Lee Dewar

My mother was the influence on me - my father was absent. He was a diamond dealer; he was doing wonderful things in the background, and women were left at home. So my mother really was in charge of everything: the ballet, dance lessons, piano lessons, and latkes. — Maira Kalman

Ballet is merely a new rationalization of society's instinctive movement towards self-destruction. A dance of death for the Gadarene swine. — Eric Ambler

Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible — Agnes De Mille

Real men don't lift weights, they lift women. — Every Male Ballet Dancer

The ballet embodies the notes of music. And sometimes you almost feel like you can see the notes dance up there on the stage. — Robert Caro

I come alive, in front of the mirror, skipping and dancing and acting the fool. Dance is both escape and excitement. — Jody Watley

You dance really well."
"I took ballet lessons."
She tilted her head back to search his face, certain he was joking. "You did not."
"I did. Several of us on the team did. Good for coordination."
Resisting the laugh that bubbled up in her throat, she said, "Somehow I can't picture you in tights and a tutu."
But he did laugh. "We made sure no one with a camera got within miles of the studio. — Jaci Burton

I have a sister who is a dancer and dance teacher. We grew up dancing together. I wanted to become a ballerina when I was a kid, so she and I were always at ballet conservatories and going to school with our hair in buns. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape. — W. H. Auden

My grandmother had a Miss Margaret's School of Dance to teach tap and ballet to kids, but I never studied it. I was raised a Mormon and they're dancing fools. It's the only vice they have - dancing. — Michelle Shocked

'The Firebird' just symbolizes a lot for me and my career. It was one of the first really big principal roles that I was ever given an opportunity to dance with American Ballet Theatre, and it was a huge step for the African-American community, I think, within the classical ballet world. — Misty Copeland

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

When I was 16, I moved to Torrance, California to train at a more advanced studio, and by 19, I joined the American Ballet Theatre in New York. It all happened so fast - it was pretty unheard of that someone could train for so few years and become a professional at one of the most elite dance companies in the United States. — Misty Copeland

Every teacher will tell you that you cannot dance classical technique with perfection, there is no such thing, there is no way. So you have to adapt the technique to your abilities or to your deficiencies. Learn to cheat! — Jiri Kylian

The first dance performance I saw was Joffrey Ballet doing 'Billboards' to Prince. — Kyle Abraham

My mother and my father always had me in ballet and dance, and I sang in a girl's group. — Jessica White

My earliest memory is of sitting at Mum's dance school, watching her teach a ballet class. — Sarah Parish

At the time I started in ballet they were dancing 'The Spirit of Champagne' on pointe, in Paris. I thought, 'I don't want to dance the spirit of champagne, I want to drink it! — Martha Graham

I love dancing and practiced ballet for ten years until I realized I wouldn't make it professionally - then I started taking salsa classes. I learned to dance samba in Rio and Salvador when I lived in Brazil. — Leila Janah

You have to be able to cut off from the ballet and relax, or you have anxiety dreams at night, worrying about what you're going to dance the next day, going over every little detail. — Darcey Bussell

I had to do a tango with Raft and I learned to dance in ballet shoes with my knees bent. — Marie Windsor

When you take dancing lessons, you learn steps and you learn steps and you learn steps. It can go on for a long time. And then one day, you just learn to dance, and it is so different. — Bill Austin

Nobody cares if you can't dance well. — Martha Graham

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

The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion, the steadfast and willing devotion to the labor that makes the classwork not a gymnastic hour and a half, or at the lowest level, a daily drudgery, but a devotion that allows the classroom discipline to become moments of dancing too ... — Merce Cunningham

A gracefully effortless floating, flowing and flying are the essentials of the ballet's image of man. — Ayn Rand

Ballet found me. I was discovered by a teacher in middle school. I always danced, my whole life. I never had any training, never was exposed to seeing dance, but I always had something inside of me. — Misty Copeland

Prayer is like practicing the piano or ballet or writing: you have to bring your body for a very long time, in spite of your body's frailties and conflicts and general revolt, and then one day your body is not separate any more. You've in a sense become the piano or the dance or the word or the prayer. The prayer is in your heart. The prayer is your heart. — Heather King

Ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance. — William Wordsworth

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

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

I was really creative. I started to dance very young. I loved to dance. I begged my mother to put me into dance classes, and finally, in third grade, she did. Tap and jazz, but not ballet. — Laverne Cox

Having Alexei Ratmansky create a new Romeo and Juliet for The National Ballet of Canada to mark our 60th anniversary is a dream come true. His aesthetic
steeped in the Russian school but open to contemporary sources
is ideal for this work and for our company, which, with our classical heritage and our passion for the modern, is perfectly suited to his distinctive dance vision. — Karen Kain

I had never picked up a basketball before. I went through a grueling audition process. It was almost as if I was learning to walk. It would be like teaching somebody to dance ballet for a role. — Sanaa Lathan

If you wanna dance, a windshield wiper'll do it-all you need is a beat. — Artie Shaw

There are those who dance the notes, and those who dance the music. — Eva Ibbotson

I started dancing when I was five, and I trained intensively as a competitive dancer up until the end of high school. I did all genres, and later on a did a lot of extra ballet on top of that. I actually got accepted to Julliard for dance during my senior year, but I ultimately turned it down to come to L.A. to act. — Jacob Artist

I didn't study dance. I had some ballet lessons because I needed it for posture and for my arms, mostly. My skating coach said I really needed it, from the belly button up, as opposed to the footwork. In skating, the shoes don't move. — Dorothy Hamill

I didn't grow up on dance class. I was always natural. I've been in the industry since I was eight and I've always had a choreographer since then. But I never really took ballet or anything like that. — Marques Houston

There are shortcuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them. — Vicki Baum

I'm the first one out on the dance floor. In college I had to take jazz, ballet and tap dancing, but, before that, it was just social. — Miles Teller

One of the most beautiful sights in dance is American Ballet Theatre in full flight. — Clive Barnes

To have a platform like So You Think You Can Dance, where you're reaching this audience that's been created over the 10 years that they've been on the air. People who didn't know anything about dance and aren't going to go to the theater are learning about it, even if it's ballroom and jazz, by just turning their television ono. They're building this audience that's advanced and educated enough to introduce them to ballet. — Misty Copeland

Degas was obsessed by the art of classical ballet, because to him it said something about the human condition. He was not a balletomane looking for an alternative world to escape into. Dance offered him a display in which he could find, after much searching, certain human secrets. — John Berger

The discipline that ballet requires is obsessive. And only the ones who dedicate their whole lives are able to make it. Your toenails fall off and you peel them away and then you're asked to dance again and keep smiling. I wanted to become a professional ballet dancer. — Penelope Cruz

Master technique and then forget about it and be natural. — Anna Pavlova

Dance till the stars come down from the rafters
Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop. — W. H. Auden

I'm terrible at being one of those moms who can sit in the bleachers or dance studios and make forced small talk with parents who all seem to know (and secretly hate) each other and who never seem to show up in pajamas or mismatched shoes. I'm continually saying something awkward and inappropriate, like "I thought this was just for fun" or "No, actually I don't think that toddler is too fat for ballet. — Jenny Lawson

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

When I feel the joy of receiving a gift my heart nudges me to join creation's ballet, the airy dance of giving and receiving, and getting and giving again. — Lewis B. Smedes

I've always loved dancing. As soon as there is good music, I've got to get up and dance. I was passionate about ballet as a little girl. — Cherie Lunghi

In the ballet studio, it was such an organized and disciplined environment, like I'd never had in my life. Seeing myself in the mirror, surrounded by the classical music, that's when I started to fall in love with dance. — Misty Copeland

Dance is very, very old. With Louis XIV at Versailles is where ballet started. — Neve Campbell

I love dancing, actually. My mother taught children's dance, ballet, tap, jazz ... I'm very flexible. — Michael Angarano

You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.
— Merce Cunningham

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

The choreographer cannot deliberately make a ballet to appeal to an audience, he has to start from personal inspirations. He has to trust the ballet, to let it stand on its own strengths or fall on its weaknesses. If it reaches the audience, then he is lucky that round! — Gerald Arpino

My first mentor and inspiration was my Irish Dancing teacher Patricia Mulholland. She created her own form of dance known as Irish ballet and created stage productions of old Irish myths and legends. They were my first experiences on stage. She told my mum I was destined for the stage, and I took that as my cue. — Laura Donnelly

I wasn't a ballet baby. My first dance class was in an outdoor pavilion when I was three. It was called 'creative movement.' The teacher gave us chiffon scarves in beautiful colors. She turned on some music and said, 'Now go dance.' So for me, dance has always been about self-expression. — Carrie Ann Inaba

Dance me slowly along a moonlit path,
Soaked with light from moon and stars above,
Hold my hand and whistle a tune,
Dance me slowly to the edge of Love.
Waltz here with me on forest grass,
Soft ballet pirouettes round sun dappled trees,
Hold my hand and hum a tune,
Catch my freshly blown kiss off the breeze. — Michelle Geaney

I can dance. I like hip hop and stuff and jazz movements, but I'm horrible in ballet. I tried. — Keke Palmer

The ballet. I saw in the fugitive beauty of a dancer's gesture a symbol of life. It was achieved at the cost of unending effort but, with all the forces of gravity against it, a fleeting poise in mid-air, a lovely attitude worthy to be made immortal in a bas-relief, it was lost as soon as it was gained and there remained no more than the memory of an exquisite emotion. So life, lived variously and largely, becomes a work of art only when brought to its beautiful conclusion and is reduced to nothingness in the moment when it arrives at perfection. — W. Somerset Maugham

It was something I was more interested in myself. When I went to see my sister dance at ballet, I was really into costumes and the arts, and my family was also supportive of whatever me and my sister wanted to do. I would say I pushed myself the most to be into design. — Christian Siriano

I was a ballet dancer. I did other kinds of dance but ballet was my great love. But then it became clear, when I was 12, that my body wasn't going to be right. That's always a heartbreaking moment because there's nothing you can do about that. Your body is just not right. You don't have enough turnout. You're not built properly. — Greta Gerwig

It [ballet] is a perfect medium for the expression of spiritual love. — Ayn Rand

I've studied dance since I was very young, and I continue to study ballet. — Sarah Gadon

Ballet is a dance executed by the human soul. — Alexander Pushkin

If I'm at a party, I can put on some crazy dance moves. However, it's not synchronized, beautiful or choreographed like a ballet dancer. I'd love to be graceful like that. — Sierra McCormick

If nobody comes to your shows, then it's modern dance. If everybody comes to your shows and no one likes it, is that ballet? I don't know. — Mark Morris

We must never forget that the dance is the cradle of Negro music. — Alain LeRoy Locke

Ballet: men wearing pants so tight that you can tell what religion they are. — Robin Williams

Ballet is only good when it is great. — Arlene Croce

It [ballet] projects a fragile kind of strength and a certain inflexible precision. — Ayn Rand

Respect your body. Eat well. Dance forever. — Eliza Gaynor Minden

I don't really dance for pleasure much." "Uh
so you, uh, usually dance professionally, or what?" Seb asked. "Yeah," said Nick. "The ballet is my passion. — Sarah Rees Brennan

In order to dance professionally, you have to start at a young age. No matter what, your muscle structure and your bones have to be groomed from a very young age. Nobody wakes up at 17 and decides to become a ballet dancer. — Amanda Schull

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. — Pixie Lott

One of the few things in dance to match the Royal Ballet's curtain calls is the Royal Ballet's dancing. — Clive Barnes

I watch the beautiful performance with an ache in my chest.
Then, just when I can't stand the sadness anymore, a dancer floats out from the side of the stage. A dancer in ragged clothes, filthy and half starved. He's not even in ballet shoes. He's just barefoot as he glides out to take his place in the dance.
The other dancers turn to him, and it's clear that he is one of them. One of the lost ones. By the look on their faces, they weren't expecting him. This is not part of the practiced show. He must have seen them onstage and joined in.
Amazingly, the dance continues without a missed beat. The newcomer simply glides into place, and the final dancer who should have danced solo with her missing partner dances with the newcomer.
It is full of joy, and the ballerina actually laughs. Her voice is clear and high, and it lifts us all. — Susan Ee

But it's this one boy, hanging over a barre, sharing his history, who ended up here with me, in this moment, by pure fate. I wonder what it would be like to kiss him. — Jessica Calla

At 35 years of age, I realized that my ballet career wasn't going to last for ever. As a parent of three young children, I had to start to plan my future after dance even though I dreaded about. — Li Cunxin

A major assumption that underlies this selection is that it is only within work that is progressive, experimental or avant-garde that staid, old-fashioned images and ideas about gender can be challenged and alternatives imagined. I have never seen a ballet performance that has not disappointed me. — Ramsay Burt

You consider me for a moment, perhaps balancing the weight of your fear against the loneliness you will later feel in your room if you do not speak now — Guy Mankowski

When you are on stage in front of an audience, you want to engage the entire crowd. If a thousand people are in the theater, you need to dance a thousand different ways, not one-thousandth of a way. — Suzanne Farrell

Well, I took ballet for many, many years, so my whole childhood really revolved around dance class. I grew up around dance; my mother was a dancer. — Amy Sherman-Palladino

I started dancing ballet when I was very young, so my background really is dance. But I remember loving the feeling of being on a stage and having a love for performing from a young age. — Caroline Sunshine

I feel his arm
Lightly
Over me.
He takes one of my outstretched hands.
Draws it beneath my stomach.
"One more time ... "
This is not sex,
Not friendship.
Something
Strange
Special
In the stillness of his breath,
The waterlike way he moves.
He is making a dance.
We are making a dance. — Stasia Ward Kehoe

I know a lot of choreographers prefer to do abstract dance and not be bothered with a story, but even when I'm asked to do classical ballet or a modern piece, I still want to tell a story. — Susan Stroman

I am very obsessed with ballet now because it is a very difficult sport and a beautiful one because it is not about money. It's not like playing football or tennis - dance has no sponsors, it's just for the beauty. Maybe it is the only last pure sport. — Carine Roitfeld

In order to dance well, nothing is so important as the turning outwards of the thigh; and nothing is so natural to men as the contrary position. — Jean-Georges Noverre

I attended Professional Children's School in Manhattan because my ballet and modern dance schedules were intensive and had started to interfere with regular school hours. — Essence Atkins

I made the sympathetic face, and the interested face, and even the impressed face. I did not say, 'In the name of all that is holy, cease this incessant drivel, you pretentious ass. — Meg Howrey

I was called a bookish child. Mother sent me to a ballet teacher in Cincinnati when I was nine years old. I guess I was an awkward child and the family wanted me to be graceful. When I found out I liked to dance and people seemed to like to watch me, I was determined to go places. — Vera-Ellen

I didn't speak a single word of English when I was told that I was one of the lucky students been selected to go to study at the Houston Ballet Academy. I knew I had to study hard in every aspect, in both language and dance, which I did. I put my whole heart and soul into each minute of my day while in America and what an experience those six weeks gave me. — Li Cunxin