Ballets Quotes & Sayings

In the world of classical ballet there are only a handful of story ballets, so getting a new one is cause for excitement. — Karen Kain

A dancer, more than any other human being, dies two deaths: the first, the physical when the powerfully trained body will no longer respond as you would wish. After all, I choreographed for myself. I never choreographed what I could not do. I changed steps in Medea and other ballets to accommodate the change. But I knew. And it haunted me. I only wanted to dance. — Martha Graham

I suppose I'm the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it's the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other. — Alan Bennett

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

Sometimes I feel as if sections of my ballets were done for me - that I didn't do them myself. — Antony Tudor

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 wanted to be a ballerina as a child - I had a tutu, and I used to stage my own ballets in our front room with my family as the audience. — Lucy Hawking

I like dramatic ballets, particularly if they're ballets in which I have a chance to go from one extreme of style or characterization to another. — Suzanne Farrell

I was not influenced by concerts as a child, but I was very strongly influenced by the ballets I saw. — Bebe Neuwirth

If our ballets be feeble, monotonous and dull, if they be devoid of ideas, meaning, expression and character, it is less the fault of the art than that of the artist. — Jean-Georges Noverre

The very essence of ballet is poetic, deriving from dreams rather than from reality. About the only reason for its existence is to enable us to remain in the world of fantasy and escape from the people we rub shoulders with in the street. Ballets are the dreams of poets taken seriously. — Theophile Gautier

Not only are most of our citizens fathomlessly ignorant of the glories of American literature, a fast-growing percentage of our students are no longer taught much about any works of American art, be they novels, paintings, symphonies or ballets. — Terry Teachout

When you dance, it takes a lot of stamina, but it never seemed like work 'cause I was doing something that I so loved doing. It was always a joy. And you know, to have beautiful ballets made specially for you is such an honor. I always said it was better than diamonds. — Patricia McBride

'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

Because all the movies that we tell ourselves we can't make - ballets, westerns, dramas, everything that are the hardest things to make - those are the movies that are not only winning awards which is fantastic, but also those movies that are commercial. We won't see a fascinating season like this for a while. — Amy Pascal

The sea-lentils tied to giant serpentine string beans, sea-liquor brine, sea-lyme grass, sea-moss, sea-cucumbers. He never knew the sea had such a lavish garden - sea-plumes, sea-grapes, sea-lungs. [ ... ] The sky put on its own evanescent spectacles, a pivoting stage, fugitive curtains, decors for ballets, floating icebergs, unrolled bolts of chiffon, gold and pearl necklaces, marabous of oyster white, scarves of Indian saris, flying feathers, shorn lambs, geometric architecture in snows and cotton. His theater was the clouds, where no spectacle repeated itself. — Anais Nin

Opera halls, ballets, and large art museums receive more funding
and not all from the government
than do popular art and what might be considered popular music venues ... But there are plenty of innovative musicians ... who have had as much trouble surviving as symphony orchestras and ballet companies ... Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past? ... The 2011 annual operating budget for the New York Metropolitan Opera is $325 million; a big chunk of that, $182 million, came from donations from wealthy patrons. — David Byrne

I live in the Dark Ages, the 17th century. Actually, I would have loved to be in Paris in the early 20th century when the Ballets Russes were there and Chanel was designing. — Iris Apfel

Dancing and ballets would undoubtedly take on a new lease on life, if the customs established by a spirit of fear and jealousy did not in some way close the path of glory ... — Jean-Georges Noverre

Of course, from one point of view the unhappy events of our own century might be regarded as, say, demonstration ballets on the theme 'Hydrocarbon Synthesis' with strong audience participation. — J.G. Ballard

There's the tradition of the 19th-century ballets, and the 20th century has had a difficult time with that tradition. And it's had a difficult time with many components of the Romantic imagination because of modernism. — Twyla Tharp

Dance in the most perishable of the arts. Ballets are forgotten, ballerinas retire, choreographers die
and what remains of that glorious production which so excited us a decade ago, a year ago, or even last night? — Jack Anderson

I will be like Nijinksi, who was taken last year to the Russian ballet, and could not comprehend what spectacle he was viewing. I will be alone, quite alone in myself, indifferent to all the world's ballets. — Andre Breton

[...] all expressions of creativity have a structure at work within them, most particularly those who adhere to a classical form. All romances are the same in the same way that all choreographed ballets are the same. Each ballet is a written sequence of the same steps, but each performance is remarquably different [...] — Sarah Wendell

The first year with ABT I learned 13 new roles. Most were lengthy ballets, more complicated than I was used to. I have suffered from tendinitis since I was 13, and it flared up again until the pain was paralyzing. There were times I prayed I'd be sick so I wouldn't have to go on. — Gelsey Kirkland

I'm trying to do things I have never done. Like I recently went to 3 different ballets. And I loved trying to learn how to like those a little bit. — Brian Regan

All Ballets' fundamental steps are derived from the folk dances of Western Europe. — Ninette De Valois

I like new ballets because they're totally new. As you get older, new experiences are harder and harder to come by, so it's pretty great to have a new experience. — Robert Caro

Art begs you to notice it. Why? Because art is God's way of saying hello. So pay attention to poetry. Pay attention to music. Pay attention to paintings and sculptures and photo exhibits and ballets and plays. Don't let all this go unnoticed. Your world is shouting out to you, revealing something intrinsically glorious about itself. Listen carefully. Love art, the way art loves life. — Neale Donald Walsch

I have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer's work is. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

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

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

The best gift I was ever given was the arts. My mum gave me those on a silver platter. Growing up, her and my grandmother would take me to ballets, classical concerts, even smoky jazz clubs I wasn't supposed to be in! — Jill Scott

Most ballets are more interesting than most men. — 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

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

As long as my ballets are danced, I will live — Rudolf Nureyev

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'm a classical ballet dancer, and at the end of the day I want to be with American Ballet Theater, performing classical ballets. — Misty Copeland

The only weapon I had was my dancing.
With that I fought like a general without an army.
If I could have saved all the energy I wasted on my struggle
it would have sufficed me to cover a dozen ballets. — Maya Plisetskaya

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

The ballets you do make you into the final product you are. And I had extraordinary partners. — Patricia McBride

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