Professional Ballet Quotes & Sayings

Once you become a professional, to get through a ballet like 'Swan Lake' - four acts as the lead, changing character - the perseverance is incredible. It takes a lot to make it through and keep the same energy throughout the entire performance. — Misty Copeland

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

My career came together very quickly. I only trained for four years before I became a professional, so I didn't have a lot of time to sit back and be inspired before I took my first ballet class. — Misty Copeland

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

Harry went closer and could see she was attractive. And there was something about the relaxed way she spoke, the way she looked him straight in the eye, that suggested that she was also self-assured. A professional woman, he guessed. Something requiring a cool, rational mind. Estate agent, head of a department in a bank, politician or something like that. Well-off at any rate, of that he was fairly sure. It wasn't just the coat and the colossal house behind her, but something in the attitude and the high, aristocratic cheekbones. She walked down the steps as if walking along a straight line, made it seem easy. Ballet lessons, Harry thought. — Jo Nesbo

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

I did ballet, jazz and flamenco from when I was five years old. And my professional career started with dancing in musicals. — Jennifer Lopez

I actually came to New York when I was 12 and did ballet school for a little while. I was being groomed to be professional, and a lot of the professors and teachers there were drawn to me and thought that I could become a professional ballerina. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Growing up in Niagara Falls, Ontario, I took classes as a young girl and became very serious about ballet, and also performed with a local company, although it wasn't a professional company. — Cathy Marie Buchanan

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

My father, my uncles, my aunts, from my father's side and my mother's side ... they were all professional musicians. My father was a concert master, he took me to a lot of rehearsals, concerts, performances, opera, ballet. For me, that was life. — Lalo Schifrin