Quotes & Sayings About Classical Ballet

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

I went to the Performing Arts School and studied classical ballet. That attitude is something that's put into your head. You are never thin enough. — Carmen Electra

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

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

I'm very flower-like. I love classical music. I go to ballet and I cry. There's nothing so beautiful. — Michael Gambon

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

I think that I'm so fortunate to have found classical ballet. It completely changed my life and it shaped the person that I am today, on and off the stage. — Misty Copeland

The heart of the classical repertory is the Tchaikovsky-Petipa 'Sleeping Beauty,' and no ballet is harder to get right. — Robert Gottlieb

I grew up as a dancer. I did tap, classical ballet, all of that. I did Indian dancing, or Bharata Natyam, classic temple dancing from Madras, originally. My mother always had the great idea that I should learn it. — Roselee Goldberg

'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

Jazz has a strong following in certain circles and there are annual jazz festivals in Puerto Plata and at Casa de Teatro in the capital. Grammy-winning Dominican jazz pianist Michael Camilo has had success on a global level. The classical music and ballet — Ginnie Bedggood

Being a former dancer, classical dancer, it informed me as a human being just in terms of the grace I guess. Ballet is a very graceful form of art. You also become very aware of your body and your mind and your body is working in conjunction. That kind of helps you in acting as well. It's not only using your mind, it's like making your mind communicate this character into your body so that you can bring it to life and physicalize it. — Zoe Saldana

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

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 think American Ballet Theatre is setting that standard now for classical ballet, that you can dream big, and it doesn't matter what you look like, where you come from, what your background is. — 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

[...] 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

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

Madame LaFleur would say that you're more of a classical ballet dancer instead of a jazz dancer. But sometimes all you have to do is change costumes to become something different. — Karen White

Who Am I?
I'm a creator, a visionary, a poet. I approach the world with the eyes of an artist, the ears of a musician, and the soul of a writer. I see rainbows where others see only rain, and possibilities when others see only problems. I love spring flowers, summer's heat on my body, and the beauty of the dying leaves in the fall. Classical music, art museums, and ballet are sources of inspiration, as well as blues music and dim cafes. I love to write; words flow easily from my fingertips, and my heart beats rapidly with excitement as an idea becomes a reality on the paper in front of me. I smile often, laugh easily, and I weep at pain and cruelty. I'm a learner and a seeker of knowledge, and I try to take my readers along on my journey. I am passionate about what I do. I learned to dream through reading, learned to create dreams through writing, and learned to develop dreamers through teaching. I shall always be a dreamer. Come dream with me. — Sharon M. Draper

I grew up with classical music when I was a ballet dancer. Now when I have to prepare an emotional scene, to cry or whatever, I listen to sonatas. Vivaldi and stuff. It's just beautiful to me. — Diane Kruger

I used to dance for seventeen years -classical ballet, which was very disciplined. I like yoga and Pilates, but I don't have the discipline to go to the gym. — Penelope Cruz

The classical ballet world is so exclusive and small, and a lot of people don't know about it. — Misty Copeland

Being one of the few African American women to make it to this level in a classical ballet company, the level of American Ballet Theatre, takes a lot of perseverance. — Misty Copeland

I think that having a platform and having a voice to be seen by people beyond the classical ballet world has really been my power, I feel. — Misty Copeland

Classical ballet will never die. — Ninette De Valois

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'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

Russians are very discerning about ballet. They're very opinionated about what classical ballet is. — David Hallberg

Just as experience dictates to the ballet teacher the length of time necessary to train his students, so the horse, too, needs time to mature into a great four legged dancer. This fact cannot be obliterated by seeming successes that supposedly prove the opposite. For, even if someone should succeed in training a horse to high school level by the age of eight, this individual occurrence cannot shake the foundations of the classical art of riding, if this dressage horse is completely unsound and unusable by the age of ten. — Alois Podhajsky

I grew up listening to hipster jazz and classical records ... we went and watched ballet and orchestras - lots of cool stuff. Which I'm really grateful for - it's pretty nice being introduced to that when you're little. — Courtney Barnett

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

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

With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself. — Marina Abramovic

The vocabulary and manner of classical ballet express a high order of discipline and restraint, a sense of harmony with forces larger and more lasting than the individual. — Marcia Siegel

My Mom is a ballet director, so I had this idea in me that classical training is the best foundation for anything you do, so I wanted to get a classical background and voice. — Shuler Hensley

I'll never be satisfied in classical ballet. It'll never be good enough. I'll never be happy with most of my product. — David Hallberg

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