Top 100 Ballet's Quotes
#1. A gracefully effortless floating, flowing and flying are the essentials of the ballet's image of man.
Ayn Rand
#2. One of the few things in dance to match the Royal Ballet's curtain calls is the Royal Ballet's dancing.
Clive Barnes
#3. 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
#4. When you can't follow a ballet's action, you can always read the program notes.
Robert Gottlieb
#5. For Russians, to whom Pushkin's poem 'Eugene Onegin' is sacred text, the ballet's story and personae are as familiar and filled with meaning as, for instance, 'Romeo' and 'Hamlet' are for us. Russians know whole stretches of it by heart, the way we know Shakespeare and Italians know Dante.
Robert Gottlieb
#6. Dancing is forbidden to Christians. Isn't it suggestive that the word ballet comes from the Greek ballo, which is also the origin of diabolos, "devil"?8
Peter J. Leithart
#7. The Internet, and the computers that made it possible, came from a rather dark place, much more missile than ballet, and they might yet return there. This book is about how and why that could happen, and what might be done about it.
Scott Malcomson
#8. My life isn't theories and formulae. It's part instinct, part common sense. Logic is as good a word as any, and I've absorbed what logic I have from everything and everyone ... from my mother, from training as a ballet dancer, from Vogue magazine, from the laws of life and health and nature.
Audrey Hepburn
#9. I was completely broke, so I started saying yes to everything. I said yes to a woman who approached me about shooting the Dracula ballet, even though I felt like I was probably going to sabotage it.
Guy Maddin
#10. I wanted to open the dialogue about race in ballet and bring more people in. It's just beautiful to see the interest that has exploded for such an incredible art form that I will forever be grateful to!
Misty Copeland
#11. Finding ballet was like finding this missing piece of myself.
Misty Copeland
#12. Coco Chanel was always doing things with ballet, so it is a tradition clashing fashion and ballet.
Carine Roitfeld
#13. We act as a conduit for the observers' unexpressed desires, the silent appreciation they may contain for anything; a lover, a river, a building even
Guy Mankowski
#15. Ballet has really helped me in every acting role. You have to be very disciplined, you have to be able to control your nerves and perform under pressure, and all those things you have to use in acting when you're on film or going for an audition.
Mia Wasikowska
#17. With both acting and ballet, often you can't just choose when you do it, whereas a painter can go at his own pace.
Mia Wasikowska
#18. When I was about 12, I was studying Chinese and ballet with my brother, and one morning Jonathan said to me, 'I don't think I'm going to go to ballet class anymore,' and I looked at him and said, 'You know, I don't think I'm going to go to Chinese class anymore.'
Damian Woetzel
#19. There are shortcuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.
Vicki Baum
#20. 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
#21. I want to be a lawyer, a dancer, an actress, a mother, a wife, a children's author, a distance runner, a poet, a pianist, a pet store owner, an astronaut, an environmental and humanitarian activist, a psychiatrist, a ballet teacher, and the first woman president.
Rachel Corrie
#22. I had been a ballet dancer and never could make a living, and just being so excited that I got to, all of a sudden, live as an actor.
Lea Thompson
#23. Our animals don't do drugs. Instead, we move them almost daily in a tightly choreographed ballet from pasture spot to pasture spot.
Joel Salatin
#24. I went to ballet school for nine years, and there was an agent for the whole school who happened to be there visiting one of the performances. She suggested an audition.
Sarah Sutton
#25. I went to my mum at about seven or eight and said I want to start acting, but the week before, I had said I wanted to do ballet. She said if I took acting classes for a full year, she would look further into it, and that's how it started.
Hailee Steinfeld
#26. 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
#27. I can remember being very keen to go to drama school at the age of eight, and practising ballet in my bedroom to Queen soundtracks.
Carmen Ejogo
#28. I found at a young age that emotions aren't always handled with talking and other emotions. I started ballet, seriously around fourteen, and let me tell you, nothing can give you an emotional reset like a good ballet barre.
Michael Adam Hamilton
#29. I didn't care too much for ballet, because you had to be more disciplined, and you sort of looked like everyone else. It required a certain kind of conformity that I didn't feel like I wanted to do.
Suzanne Farrell
#30. Making the ballet really taught me how to get things moving. Ballet dancers don't stand still.
Guy Maddin
#31. I always wanted to act and sing, but my first love was ballet.
Jennifer Ellison
#32. Ballet is important and significant - yes. But first of all, it is a pleasure.
George Balanchine
#33. Whenever I have had a sudden urge to quit dancing, I just remember that moment I had when I was young and remember that dancing is what I want to do.
Anna Pavlova
#34. Some Russian ballet master woman said there's no culture in America, but if you look you can find interesting stuff in this country, don't you think?
Robert Duvall
#35. A fine picture is but the image of nature; a finished ballet is nature herself.
Jean-Georges Noverre
#36. I made the sympathetic face, and the interested face, and even the impressed face. I did not say, 'In the name of all that is holy, cease this incessant drivel, you pretentious ass.
Meg Howrey
#37. Ballet became this escape for me. I feel like I was on my own a lot. I was searching for stability, so I was going off on my own and imagining what I thought stability was. Ballet became a way for me to cope.
Misty Copeland
#39. I got the part [in Into the Forest], I started taking ballet again to try to regain my strength back. I actually love that it was changed to Crystal Pite's modern dance. And I wouldn't even really call it modern dance because it feels like it's in its own genre.
Evan Rachel Wood
#40. Since my mom is the President of Ballet Hawaii, I'm always in touch with stuff going on.
Joan Chen
#41. In terms of withstanding incredible amounts of pain - both physical and emotional - I don't think there's any better training than ballet.
Julia Jones
#42. My parents have always given me whatever I wanted. Took me to the ballet, the opera, museum exhibitions. I was always surrounded by art. It's their fault I've become an actress.
Bar Paly
#43. I don't really dance for pleasure much." "Uh
so you, uh, usually dance professionally, or what?" Seb asked. "Yeah," said Nick. "The ballet is my passion.
Sarah Rees Brennan
#44. It's hard to change someone's ideas when they might not even really consciously know that they're being racist, or have racist ideas, just because ballet has been this way for hundreds of years.
Misty Copeland
#45. 'Swan Lake' is the most difficult thing to portray for a female ballet dancer; it really requires such specific qualities of articulation, agility, strength, and the arm work is something that takes a lot of training.
Benjamin Millepied
#46. When I was nine, I started doing ballet. That's when I knew that I was down to keep doing it.
Ansel Elgort
#47. Well, I took ballet for many, many years, so my whole childhood really revolved around dance class. I grew up around dance; my mother was a dancer.
Amy Sherman-Palladino
#48. I had a really creative teacher at primary school. He used to get us doing things such as singing Spandau Ballet in drag in the choir, and I remember loving it.
Dominic Cooper
#49. Go figure a crazy, mixed-up country where ballet outsells boxing. I wouldn't be surprised if their wrestling was on the level.
Bob Hope
#50. Ballet pumps are the dream shoes because they are so comfortable. They look great both with jeans and summer dresses; and you can even wear the right pair with an evening gown.
Twiggy
#51. 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
#52. I was born in Toronto and studied with the National Ballet of Canada. I went to school to study dance, slept on the floor, ate nothing, waitressed - and then there was a Mary J. Blige audition.
Laurieann Gibson
#53. The deep art ... That's the part that has to be guarded like a miser would his money ... Like a dope addict would his dope ... Like a lover with their love.
Alonzo King
#54. Don't hold on to the barre like, 'I might die.' It's just ballet.
Misty Copeland
#55. When I've done gymnastics, ballet or soccer - I was always trying to be the best. I'm really driven. Really driven.
Chloe Grace Moretz
#56. Simplicity itself is the key. Education in ballet, dance, martial arts, etc., is done through poses, or to be more precise, through a countless series of poses. Perfection of movement is achieved through the flow of perfectly rehearsed poses.
Nicholas Romanov
#57. I started with ballet and then my cousin Sarah introduced me to her tap teachers.
Adam Garcia
#58. I love going to see the theatre whether it's a Broadway play or a Russian ballet company.
Michael Ealy
#59. I love dancing, actually. My mother taught children's dance, ballet, tap, jazz ... I'm very flexible.
Michael Angarano
#60. 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
#61. Ballet was this thing that just felt so innate in me, like I was meant to be doing this.
Misty Copeland
#62. I can see why they named that ballet the Nutcracker. It's gotta hurt having 'em crushed in something that tight.
Mark A. Cooper
#63. When Disney was creating Elsa, they based a lot of her movements on that of a ballerina, which was interesting for me to find out because I actually did ballet years ago. That definitely informed some of the ways I made her walk and move.
Georgina Haig
#64. In order to dance well, nothing is so important as the turning outwards of the thigh; and nothing is so natural to men as the contrary position.
Jean-Georges Noverre
#65. One of the most beautiful sights in dance is American Ballet Theatre in full flight.
Clive Barnes
#66. The eternal and uneasy relationship between ballet and modern dance endures, but radically altered in tone and intensity.
Robert Gottlieb
#68. So I'm studying ballet every day and really training so people will see me as a ballet dancer, which no one's seen before.
Sutton Foster
#69. At Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet Academy, I studied under a brilliant and fiery teacher. This tiny, stuttering old man flew into a rage if his students' white socks failed to reach mid-calf level. Nor could he tolerate floppy hair. We wore hairnets to class - an athletic brigade of short order cooks.
Sascha Radetsky
#70. Ballet really lends itself to that because there's such a sense of ritual, with wrapping the shoes every day and preparing new shoes for every performance. It's such a process. It's almost religious, in nature.
Natalie Portman
#71. Cincinnatians support a symphony, an opera, a ballet, museums, many galleries and theater groups.
Bill Dedman
#72. Ballet is not technique but a way of expression that comes more closely to the inner language of man than any other.
George Sava
#73. NO greater love has a husband for his wife than to watch a 2hr documentary on an elite ballet competition.
Mark Venturini
#74. When you are on stage in front of an audience, you want to engage the entire crowd. If a thousand people are in the theater, you need to dance a thousand different ways, not one-thousandth of a way.
Suzanne Farrell
#75. This art, born of genius and good taste, can become beautiful and varied to an infinite degree.
Jean-Georges Noverre
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. When I was a little kid, I took tap and ballet. I've always loved to dance. I'm a rhythm machine.
Tommy Lee
#79. Ballet is quite unnatural on the joints. My body is just worn. My joints are 10 years older than me.
Darcey Bussell
#80. A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I'm beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.
Twyla Tharp
#81. When I started thinking seriously about learning the rules of narrative, I thought, 'You've learned the rules of dancing from the ballet; what's the matter with learning the laws of theater from the people who know how to do it?'
Twyla Tharp
#82. I take class. I'm always ballet ready. I'm ready to go - got my tights and my shoes.
Joan Chen
#83. My family didn't have very much money, so ballet wasn't even on my radar; I just found it randomly when I was 13 at a Boys & Girls Club. We were practicing in a basketball court in gym clothes with some old socks on. Even though it terrified me at first, I found that I really liked it.
Misty Copeland
#84. I didn't grow up on dance class. I was always natural. I've been in the industry since I was eight and I've always had a choreographer since then. But I never really took ballet or anything like that.
Marques Houston
#85. 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
#86. In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell ... we can't dance synonyms.
George Balanchine
#87. I was a weird teenager. My mother was actually worried because I didn't have any interest in dating in my teenage years. I had all this desire to pursue my passions like ballet, then sailing, then music, so I didn't have any emptiness to fill.
Kiesza
#88. I've danced since I was 5 and went to the School of American Ballet at Lincoln Center at 7.
Sarah Hay
#89. 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
#90. The bulk of life on Earth lives in a peaceful place where the temperature is stable. There's hunting going on, but it's very civilized, like a slow ballet.
Graham Hawkes
#91. Somewhere in there the grace of a ballet dancer joins with the strength of an SAS squaddie, the dignity of an ancient kind, the nerve of a bomb disposal officer ...
Eamon Dunphy
#92. 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
#93. I wanted to be a dancer from when I was about nine or something like that and started ballet. I used to really like it and got into it and did it full time for a couple of years. I did a lot of ballet but I traded that in for acting when I was about 15.
Mia Wasikowska
#94. I hated the ballet, but I liked performing. I did 20 shows, and I couldn't get the smile off my face.
Ansel Elgort
#95. It was something I was more interested in myself. When I went to see my sister dance at ballet, I was really into costumes and the arts, and my family was also supportive of whatever me and my sister wanted to do. I would say I pushed myself the most to be into design.
Christian Siriano
#96. An ex-ABT ballerina, while staging a ballet for the company, once followed a dancer into the bathroom to deliver notes through the stall door. She was known to bark - literally, like a dog - during private rehearsals.
Sascha Radetsky
#97. It takes a lot of money to be a part of the ballet world. Both the training and the supplies are expensive, the shoes, the leotards and the tights.
Misty Copeland
#98. Ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
William Wordsworth
#99. At age 14, coming to the U.S., all I knew was American Ballet Theatre, Baryshnikov, Nureyev, and some of the European companies. I barely knew anything about Balanchine.
Carla Korbes
#100. Applause lavished at a whim and without discernment, often proves the ruin of young people training for a stage career.
Jean-Georges Noverre
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