Baryshnikov Dance Quotes & Sayings

There comes a moment in a young artist's life when he knows he has to bring something to the stage from within himself. He has to put in something in order to be able to take something. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

I fell in love with New York. It was like every human being, like any relationship. When I was a young New Yorker, it was one city. When I was a grown man, it was another city. I worked with many dance organizations and many wonderful people. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

You can be totally involved, you could admire just the shape of or you could be totally emotionally mushed up into the dance. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

The sand in the hour glass isn't meant to stick together. It will flow exactly same today, how it did ten years back. That's how much reliable that stuff is. The stuff that can be consistent. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

The thing is that there are obviously different ways to think about these kinds of situations. — David Foster Wallace

Nothing is ever too expensive if it furthers the repertoire and artistic standards of a dance company. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

If you love dance and you have the gift of teaching, teaching is super amazing and important because my teachers planted that seed in me. As a teacher you understand the difference or the definition of a Baryshnikov or a Gregory Hines, so teaching is really important and very necessary. — Laurieann Gibson

I would like to go and dance in Palestine one day, with great pleasure, great pleasure. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

It doesn't matter how high you lift your leg. The technique is about transparency, simplicity, making an earnest attempt. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

It is morally, politically and socially wrong for business as business or labor as labor to participate directly in politics. — George W. Romney

I want to see people dance, and I would like to guess what kind of people they are. I don't want to know the recipe for their pasta. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

We can just hang out and walk and read and talk and stuff. — David Nicholls

I don't try to dance better than anybody but myself. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

I can count on one hand the number of instrumental hits there have been over the last ten years. — Chuck Mangione

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to to dance better than myself. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

I like the most provocative and most surprising partnerships on stage. Intensity and surprise. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

Our society can no longer tolerate ugliness. You see that in cars, sofas and women. [But] ugliness also has a right to exist. — Rem Koolhaas

I cannot draw to save my life, and I'm not a big art scholar, but I worked with many designers throughout my career - in theater, in dance, costume designers, set designers, and I have a lot of artist friends and I do photography, and I think it's kind of in my life. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

Cadiz is a city of magic, like Cracow or Dublin, to set the mind on fire at a turn of a corner ... The eye is continually fed, the imagination stirred, by a train of spectacles as charming as if they had been contrived. — Honor Tracy

You might be a wallflower," he agreed, "but there's more to you, isn't there?"
"Why would you say that?"
"In my experience, the quietest women tend to be the most adventurous. There's a wildness that they let no one see. — Michelle Willingham

Dance is one of the most revealing art forms. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

The problem is not making up the steps but deciding which ones to keep. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

We're trying to stretch our muscles creatively. It gives us so much more freedom. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

I kind of lost interest in the classical dance. I was very much interested in the modern choreography. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

When a body moves, it's the most revealing thing. Dance for a minute, and I'll tell you who you are. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

If your only dance experience is the Nutcracker, it will be a shock; hopefully shocking in a good way. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

I had a good chance when I went to Beijing and the guy who beat me, I'd beaten him three weeks before and he went on to win silver. — Billy Joe Saunders

Dance is an ephemeral, a fleeting art. To describe this momentum, every movement on stage, in words is virtually impossible. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

What brought me to the theater, no matter you're a Jew or a Russian or Armenian or Latvian, are suddenly illuminated by stage light and one beautiful image of dance. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

Depression simply is. It has no beginning and no end, no boundaries and no world outside itself. It is the first, the last, the only, the alpha and the omega. Memories of better times die upon its desolate shores. Voices drown in its seas. The mind becomes its own prisoner. — Alexis Hall

You cannot dance physically certain things. But look at tango dancers or flamenco or Japanese classical theater. You can, if you're smart enough and you collaborate with the right choreographers, you could really dance your age. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

I found that dance, music, and literature is how I made sense of the world ... it pushed me to think of things bigger than life's daily routines ... to think beyond what is immediate or convenient. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

It's weird when you see pieces of choreography that were done for you 15 or 20 years ago and now they are being done by another dance company. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

Excess is excrement, ... Excrement retained in the body is a poison. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Just sit and open your eyes and open your heart. It's dance theater. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

I wouldn't live in a colony like that, myself, for a thousand dollars an hour. I wouldn't want it next door. I'm not too happy it's within ten miles. Why? Because their soft-headedness irritates me. Because their beautiful thinking ignores both history and human nature. Because they'd spoil my thing with their thing. Because I don't think any of them is wise enough to play God and create a human society. Look. I like privacy, I don't like crowds, I don't like noise, I don't like anarchy, I don't even like discussion all that much. I prefer study, which is very different from meditation-not better, different. I don't like children who are part of the wild life. So are polecats and rats and other sorts of hostile and untrained vermin. I want to make a distinction between civilization and the wild life. I want a society that will protect the wild life without confusing itself with it. — Wallace Stegner

I never liked dance photography; it's very flat, and dance photography in the studio looks very contrived. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

People dance at any age. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

Now there is in a way a renaissance of modern dance - suddenly, it is more respected and discovered. — Mikhail Baryshnikov