Quotes About Classical Ballet

#1. Russians are very discerning about ballet. They're very opinionated about what classical ballet is.

David Hallberg

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. I think classical ballet dancers dance on pointe because they're simultaneously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies

Paulo Coelho

#6. '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

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. Classical ballet will never die.

Ninette De Valois

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. 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

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

Misty Copeland

#22. With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself.

Marina Abramovic

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. 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

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

Robert Gottlieb

#27. 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

#28. 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

#29. 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

#30. 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

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

Michael Gambon

#32. 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