Top 100 Sayings About The Ballet
#3. Making the ballet really taught me how to get things moving. Ballet dancers don't stand still.
Guy Maddin
#4. A gracefully effortless floating, flowing and flying are the essentials of the ballet's image of man.
Ayn Rand
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. I hated the ballet, but I liked performing. I did 20 shows, and I couldn't get the smile off my face.
Ansel Elgort
#11. 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
#12. I toured the Middle Eastern countries with the ballet.
Leslie Caron
#13. You go to the ballet and you see girls dancing on their tiptoes. Why don't they just get taller girls?
Greg Ray
#14. Most dancers have no awareness of how they look; half of them think they're fat. There is anorexia in the ballet world; there are those things.
Benjamin Millepied
#15. 'The Nutcracker' is the ballet that keeps on giving.
David H. Koch
#16. The music industry is so easy compared to the ballet world.
Vanessa Carlton
#17. At the ballet classes I took when I first came to New York, I would see great dancers like Cynthia Gregory and Lupe Serrano. I would look at them and study what they could do, and what I couldn't do. And then I'd think maybe they should try what I could do.
Twyla Tharp
#18. Clearly, the pleasures wines afford are transitory - but so are those of the ballet, or of a musical performance. Wine is inspiring and adds greatly to the joy of living.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#19. The first time the Kirov ballet was seen in America was on Sept. 11, 1961. The ballet was 'Swan Lake.' The ballerina was Inna Zubkovskaya. The place was the old Met, on what must have been one of the hottest nights of the year, and there was no air-conditioning.
Robert Gottlieb
#20. Transplanting the ballet to the United States is like trying to raise a palm tree in Dakota.
Lincoln Kirstein
#21. I frequently go to the ballet, but I don't miss it in the sense that I wish I were still dancing.
Damian Woetzel
#23. Yeah, I shoot. I shot with my dad a little bit when I was little. He was a Marine, so it wasn't like he would take me to the ballet. We would go to a shooting range. It was the only thing he knew to teach his little girl how to do.
Jill Wagner
#24. The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener.
George Balanchine
#25. Training for the ballet, Potter? yelled Malfoy.
J.K. Rowling
#26. A young girl reached out to me to be her mentor one day, which I didn't really know anything about. What I did remember was what it was to be alone as an African-American dancer in the ballet world and wanting to connect with someone who looks like me.
Misty Copeland
#27. The ballet embodies the notes of music. And sometimes you almost feel like you can see the notes dance up there on the stage.
Robert Caro
#28. When we go in the ring we know we're going to get hit. We know we're not the ballet people. But if you go in there and have doubt in your mind that you're afraid to get hit, forget it.
Kostya Tszyu
#29. 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
#30. My mother never learned English, but in Russia, the greatest thing was to give a child to the arts. And so they gave me to the ballet.
Maria Karnilova
#31. Of course I was always mad about the ballet russe, mad about it!
Diana Vreeland
#32. The best seat in the house often depends on the ballet. For instance, much of the first act of 'The Nutcracker' is domestic and small scale, so it's great to sit up close. But the second act features elaborate scenery and choreography, which are better to observe from a distance.
Robert Gottlieb
#33. You have to be able to cut off from the ballet and relax, or you have anxiety dreams at night, worrying about what you're going to dance the next day, going over every little detail.
Darcey Bussell
#34. Culture in America and everywhere else comes from the suffering, from those who don't want the old ways. They want to bring in the new, whether it's the ballet, when it started, or Shakespeare.
Russell Simmons
#35. I feel like I represent every young dancer, and even non-dancer, who felt they were not accepted by the ballet world. I'd like to think that they can see themselves in me.
Misty Copeland
#36. My mother was the influence on me - my father was absent. He was a diamond dealer; he was doing wonderful things in the background, and women were left at home. So my mother really was in charge of everything: the ballet, dance lessons, piano lessons, and latkes.
Maira Kalman
#37. Many dancers are content with the repertoire they're given. Others are dissatisfied but don't know why. Then there are a few like me that are curious and grab at everything. Can that curiosity thrive in the ballet world, or should it exist elsewhere? That's the eternal question.
David Hallberg
#38. I've always been in love with Melbourne. When I was 12, I was taken into the city by my grandmother to go to the ballet for the first time.
Kerry Greenwood
#39. The choreographer cannot deliberately make a ballet to appeal to an audience, he has to start from personal inspirations. He has to trust the ballet, to let it stand on its own strengths or fall on its weaknesses. If it reaches the audience, then he is lucky that round!
Gerald Arpino
#40. At 7, I was at the barre and dancing at folk festivals. Then I was a student with the ballet school of the Metropolitan Opera.
Maria Karnilova
#41. They were doing the Dying Swan at the ballet. And there was a rumor that some bookmarkers had drifted into town from upstate New York and that they had fixed the bullet. There was a lot of money bet on the swan to live.
Woody Allen
#42. As a kid, I had a lot of energy; but the ballet lessons made me calm - this pleased my mother.
Penelope Cruz
#43. If I didn't have kids, I would be at the theater or the ballet every single night of my life.
Sarah Jessica Parker
#44. The ballet world I don't think is an art form that is quick to change or to adjust or evolve.
Misty Copeland
#45. At the ballet, you really feel like you're in the presence of something outside the rest of your life. Higher than the rest of your life.
Robert Caro
#46. If you have an idea of what you want to do in your future, you must go at it with almost monastic obsession, be it music, the ballet or just a basic degree. You have to go at it single-mindedly and let nothing get in your way
Henry Rollins
#48. That something that I fought so hard for throughout the beginning of my career is I didn't want to pancake my skin a lighter color to fit into the ... ballet. I wanted to be myself. I didn't want to have to wear makeup that made my nose look thinner.
Misty Copeland
#49. I grew up in Honolulu. It's not the ballet cultural mecca by any stretch of the imagination. People are much more familiar with hula than they are with ballet.
Joan Chen
#50. Edda danced in the ballet. That was her job. 'Job' was not the word other people chose to describe what Edda did, but the right word nonetheless. Words were queer that way, Edda often thought. They classified things. In her case they could place someone in another dimension.
Brooke McEldowney
#52. I remember once saying in a television interview that the only things I hadn't been in were the opera and the ballet. Two days later, I got a call from Lord Harewood, of the English National Opera, saying "Would you like to be in 'Ariadne auf Naxos?'"
Donald Sinden
#53. I deliberately made an effort not to become an expert on the ballet.
Robert Caro
#54. When you are confronted with an opera, you have to keep an eye on everything: the musicians, the chorus, the ballet, the singers, the staging.
Placido Domingo
#55. 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
#56. It's weird for minorities even just to buy tickets to the ballet. We feel like it's not a part of our lives and we're not a part of that world.
Misty Copeland
#57. The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.
Twyla Tharp
#58. ...Your love is evident,' she says. 'But, darling, sometimes the ballet does not love us back.
Jennifer Longo
#59. The life of a dancer is tragically short. What is remarkable about the New York City Ballet is that it makes us forget that. Because it keeps the ballet alive.
John Guare
#60. I love musicals; I love the ballet, opera, the circus. It's all performance to me.
Ian McKellen
#61. I want the ballet world to be given the respect that it deserves and to be seen by more people - for so many to experience the beauty that I've received from the ballet world.
Misty Copeland
#62. The ballet makes us look at those bodies, it makes us listen to that music, it makes us wonder at the geometry, of the way they come together. The way that extraordinary space is controlled and given such emotional force.
John Guare
#63. I love ballet. Ballet is its own being. It has its own vocabulary. I feel as if I am in a different world when I am in the ballet studio.
Kiernan Shipka
#64. Yes but the point is that you can go to the ballet with me or a baseball game or a concert and wherever is fine. You're like the Swiss army knife friend; you have an attachment for everything.
Mary Calmes
#65. Anytime you look at anything that's considered artistic, there's a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can't exist without it.
Steve Martin
#66. 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
#67. Another friend began to say, "Well, Quentin has a problem of adjusting himself to society and he ... " This sentence was never finished. The ballet teacher expostulated, "I don't agree. Quentin does exactly as he pleases. The rest of us have to adapt ourselves to him."
Quentin Crisp
#68. Noncooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet.
Julia Child
#69. I don't understand anything about the ballet; all I know is that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses.
Anton Chekhov
#72. My mum took me to the ballet at three, and that was the only time I sat still, with jaw open, mesmerised. She brought me home, and I wouldn't stop dancing.
Emma Rigby
#73. New York. It's home to opera, Broadway, museums, the ballet and orchestra - everything that I love. The most real people in the world live there.
Kristin Chenoweth
#74. The moment the curtain rose on that first ballet, I knew something wonderful and new had come into my life. I can still see the first scene. The ballet was Divertimento No. 15.
Robert Caro
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. A fine picture is but the image of nature; a finished ballet is nature herself.
Jean-Georges Noverre
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. Since my mom is the President of Ballet Hawaii, I'm always in touch with stuff going on.
Joan Chen
#90. '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
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. 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
#95. 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
#96. Don't hold on to the barre like, 'I might die.' It's just ballet.
Misty Copeland
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. I love going to see the theatre whether it's a Broadway play or a Russian ballet company.
Michael Ealy
#100. 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
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