BALLET QUOTES

quotations about ballet

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Life without ballet would be Pointeless.

@iSpeakBallet

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The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener.

GEORGE BALANCHINE

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Ballet is the body rising. Ballet is ceremonial and hieratic. Its disdain for the commonplace material world is the source of its authority and glamour.

CAMILLE PAGLIA

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I think most dancers would agree that the art of ballet chooses the dancer, not the other way around.

KEVIN MCKENZIE

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Ballet is a framed painting with legs.

RANULFO

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He had been impressed and a little frightened by the contrast between seeing ballet on stange, where everyone seemed to either glide or mince effortlessly on the tips of their pointes, and seeing it from less than five feet away, with harsh daylight pouring in the floor-to-ceiling windows and no music--only the choreographer rythmically clapping his hands and yelling harsh criticisms. No praise, only criticisms. Their faces ran with sweat. Their leotards were wet with sweat. The room, as large and airy as it way, stank of sweat. Sleek muscles trembled and fluttered on the nervous edge of exhaustion. Corded tendons stood out like insulated cables. Throbbing veins popped out on foreheads and necks ... these dancers were not just earning a living, they were killing themselves ... but transcending the pain, or at least creeping around its edges, he had seen joy.

STEPHEN KING

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Dance design is not simply one element; it is that without which ballet cannot exist. As aria is to opera, words to poetry, color to painting, so sequence in steps -- their syntax, idiom, vocabulary -- are the stuff of stage dancing.

LINCOLN KIRSTEIN

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I got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle ... it wasn't mine.

RITA RUDNER

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Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned.

GEORGE BALANCHINE

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You can't put ballet into words. That's why we dance.

SUZANNE FARRELL

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Ballet is like a rose. It is beautiful and you admire it, but you don't ask what it means.

GEORGE BALANCHINE

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I don't understand anything about the ballet; all I know is that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses.

ANTON CHEKHOV

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I have not dreamed about ballet in the usual sense. I have not pictured a tutu, pointe shoes, and a crown. My mother sent me to the dance class, and then we tried to enter the Vaganova Ballet Academy. They did not admit me at the first attempt, and that gave me an impulse. I realized I wanted to stay here. A new beautiful world opened for me. It motivated me and I desired to be a part of this world.

DIANA VISHNEVA

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Heaven help the American-born boy with a talent for ballet.

CAMILLE PAGLIA

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Ballet is a jealous god ... demanding a self-immolation that includes the sacrifice of personal love.

TOBI TOBIAS

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In classical ballet there are certain rules. I can't be an ordinary contemporary woman, I can only be a princess.

NATALIA OSIPOVA

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In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell…. we can’t dance synonyms.

GEORGE BALANCHINE

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The real American type can never be a ballet dancer. The legs are too long, the body too supple and the spirit too free for this school of affected grace and toe walking.

ISADORA DUNCAN

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You go to the ballet and you see girls dancing on their tiptoes. Why don't they just get taller girls?

GREG RAY

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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.

PENELOPE CRUZ

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