Quotes & Sayings About Ballet Dancers

I think classical ballet dancers dance on pointe because they're simultaneously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies — Paulo Coelho

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

Learning ballet is wonderful for children even if they never become dancers. It is wonderful because it teaches discipline, grace, and manners. — Anna Paskevska

Ballet Hispanico is far from Irish, and, though it has strong dancers, its Spanishness has always left me unconvinced. — Robert Gottlieb

I feel like people used to leave their homes and go to their local theatre, and they used to watch ballet dancers and musical theatre performers and tap dancers and orchestras and dog acts. You had to leave your home, be in the presence of other people, know how to behave, and enjoy the human being whose beating heart was in front of you. — Laura Benanti

Ballet's image of perfection is fashioned amid a milieu of wracked bodies, fevered imaginations, Balkan intrigue and sulfurous hatreds where anything is likely, and dancers know it. — Shana Alexander

I know that dancers, especially ballet dancers, can't do it forever. — Kelli Berglund

The idea that ballet is a white art is absurd and shocking, and it's gone on for too long. Nothing would make me happier than having a company that reflects society, to have dancers onstage that people can relate to. — Benjamin Millepied

I will say a lot of dancers do such beautiful things for their body and then they smoke a cigarette. I've never been a smoker, but I realized after taking yoga ... in ballet you're not encouraged to do a lot of breathing. I think in a weird way, a lot of dancers find relief in actually breathing. — Elizabeth Berkley

You are a fridge with wings. We're freaking ballet dancers. — James Patterson

When other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers, I kind of wanted to be a vampire. — Angelina Jolie

It's going to take a while before we see a real shift in the students and the dancers that are going into professional companies because it takes so many years of training, but I do think that there's a new crop of dancers, of minority dancers that are entering into the ballet world. — Misty Copeland

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

I've usually never felt comfortable shooting until things were kind of claustrophobic, but ballet dancers need a lot of space, so the sets that I designed had to be big. Normally, I'd design a kitchen that was half the size of a normal kitchen, just to make everything feel kind of womb-like, but the kitchen in a ballet would have to be like 100 feet wide and just as long. — Guy Maddin

She loved hockey. Loved the speed, the agility. The fights. The men. Brawny, sweaty, messy. They let their hair grown, though no one would ever accuse them of being feminine, not with perpetual five o'clock shadow and bulging muscles. They skated with the grace of ballet dancers and fought at the drop of a glove. — Stephanie Julian

When I was 12, I was doing competitive jazz, tap and ballet in Michigan. The studio put the best dancers together, and I joined that. We always did really, really well in local competitions. — Jillian Rose Reed

I'd say the only time I ever get nervous is around great ballet dancers or people I really admire. — Dita Von Teese

Listening to her banter with Armin was like standing between two ballet dancers in a gunfight. They circled each other elegantly, feinting, pirouetting, setting up the fatal shot, and Blythe was usually the one to fire it point-blank to Armin's chest. He accepted his wounds with a gentleman's grace, and the dance resumed. — Leah Raeder

All dancers have a cumulative tendency, because each beat of the tom-tom has an almost irresistible appeal. Soon, those who were just spectators would dance too. — Camara Laye

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

It's a well-known fact. All women are clinically insane, but especially ballet dancers. Psycho. extremely psycho. Trust me. — Marisa De Los Santos

Making the ballet really taught me how to get things moving. Ballet dancers don't stand still. — Guy Maddin

you...are...a...frige...with...wings...we...are...freaking...ballet...dancers! — James Patterson

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

Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet-dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list
the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation. — Karl Marx

Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance - not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations. — Jane Jacobs

I find that dancers are only well trained in ballet these days. — Twyla Tharp

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

She had what the Councillor knew, in the technical language of the ballet, as "ballon", a lightness that is not only the negation of weight, but which actually seems to carry upwards and make for flight, and which is rarely found in thin dancers - as if the matter itself had here become lighter than air, so that the more there is of it the better it works. — Karen Blixen

You're a fridge with wings. We're freaking ballet dancers! -Fang — James Patterson

And even this heart of mine has something artificial. The dancers have sewn it into a bag of pink satin, pink satin slightly faded, like their dancing shoes. — Edgar Degas

Some people are painters, and some are ballet dancers, and I'm a writer. — Alice Walker

Suddenly the dressing-room of La Sorelli, one of the principal dancers, was invaded by half-a-dozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come up from the stage after "dancing" Polyeucte. They rushed in amid great confusion, some giving vent to forced and unnatural laughter, others to cries of terror. Sorelli, who wished to be alone for a moment to "run through" the speech which she was to make to the resigning managers, looked around angrily at the mad and tumultuous crowd. It was little Jammes - the girl with the tip-tilted nose, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose-red cheeks and the lily-white neck and shoulders - who gave the explanation in a trembling voice:

"It's the ghost!" And she locked the door.

- Chapter 1: Is it the Ghost? — Gaston Leroux

I had danced with Janet Jackson and P. Diddy so I had done a bunch of hip hop. Really and truly my roots are in modern and ballet but, professionally, that's not really out there any more, unfortunately, so these artists aren't really having a lot of ballet dancers behind them so I had to learn hip hop really quick. — Jenna Dewan

At the ballet classes I took when I first came to New York, I would see great dancers like Cynthia Gregory and Lupe Serrano. I would look at them and study what they could do, and what I couldn't do. And then I'd think maybe they should try what I could do. — Twyla Tharp

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

I was a dancer from a young age. My parents were dancers; we were taken to a lot of ballet as children. It occurred to me that what I liked more than dancing the steps was acting the story of whatever particular performance I was taking part in. — Elizabeth Debicki

Most dancers have no awareness of how they look; half of them think they're fat. There is anorexia in the ballet world; there are those things. — Benjamin Millepied

The problem with telling people that they can do anything they want to do is that it is objectively, factually inaccurate. Otherwise the whole world would just be ballet dancers and pop stars. — David Nicholls

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

I think most dancers would agree that the art of ballet chooses the dancer, not the other way around. — Kevin McKenzie

The highest heels I do are six-inch heels - but mostly only dancers can wear them, since they are used to being on point in ballet shoes. Their feet are arched. — Christian Louboutin

You ... are ... a ... fridge ... with wings,' Fang ground out, punching an Eraser hard with every word. 'We're ... freaking ... ballet ... dancers. — James Patterson

Many dancers are content with the repertoire they're given. Others are dissatisfied but don't know why. Then there are a few like me that are curious and grab at everything. Can that curiosity thrive in the ballet world, or should it exist elsewhere? That's the eternal question. — David Hallberg

Beauty, like male ballet dancers, makes some men afraid. — Mordecai Richler

Ballet needs figures that people can recognize and relate to. People don't know ballet dancers as well as they know other artists. — David Hallberg

I think all dancers are control freaks a bit. We just want to be in control of ourselves and our bodies. That's just what the ballet structure, I think, kind of puts inside of you. — Misty Copeland

Ballet dancers are a self-chosen elite. To survive and surmount years of disciplinary preparation and seasons of even more arduous performance requires rigid determination and almost mindless self-abnegation. One other factor is difficult to predetermine: without a certain admixture of hysteria - sometimes masking as self-obsession, sometimes even counterfeiting incipient madness - performers, at once acrobats, artists, and animals, make little public impression. — Lincoln Kirstein

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

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

Dancing is creating a sculpture that is visible only for a moment. — Erol Ozan

So many people report to be contemporary dancers, and they're not. They are sort of jazz dancers that feel like they're throwing a bit of classical in there. I mean, a true contemporary dancer has got ballet as their base and classical ballet, and that is their base. And then they choose to extemporize on that and go into a contemporary world. — Nigel Lythgoe

If I had to reflect on the finest classical male ballet dancers of my time, Vladimir Vasiliev of the Bolshoi and the Danish dancer Eric Bruhn were, I feel, without peer. — Jacques D'Amboise