In this post, you will find great Ballet Quotes from famous people, such as Sylvie Guillem, Martin Kemp, Robert Caro, Misty Copeland, Condola Rashad. You can learn and implement many lessons from these quotes.
I had 10 wonderful years in Spandau Ballet. It was an incredible way to grow up, to hang out with your best mates, discovering the world, discovering who you are.
Sometimes during a ballet I’ll look around and see all these rows of intent faces, concentrating on this beautiful thing up on the stage.
I want the type of career where I can come back to theater. Theater is my home. Theater, to me, is like ballet for dancers. It’s my foundation.
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.
I had seen the ballet of ‘Swan Lake‘ as a child but it was as an adult, when I saw a production featuring Erik Bruhn, that I first noticed how significant a part the ever-present threat of violence played. This juxtaposition of great beauty and grace with a backdrop of pure evil stayed with me for years.
I grew up learning ballet, and then I took up contemporary as I got older. I probably thought I was going to be a ballet dancer when I was younger, but at a certain age, I really was more interested in acting.
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.
I started dancing when I was 5 years old. Ballet. Flamenco.
For ballet dancers, style is about melding personal expression with physical form.
I was a dancer for long time. And you always hear that ballet is the core of dance, and that – once you have that down – you can do everything else. For me, jazz is like that for music.
I did tap dancing and stuff like that at drama school. I did ballet as well. My dance teacher and I didn’t necessarily get along all that well sometimes. She’s brilliant… but it’s just because I don’t like wearing tights that I put up a bit of a fight there, I think.
In the world of classical ballet there are only a handful of story ballets, so getting a new one is cause for excitement.
I love seeing New York City Ballet from the fourth ring, just seeing the architecture of how these bodies move from above.
When I was a child, I went to stage school three times a week in the evenings – singing, ballet, tap, modern and acting, and I loved it.
My philosophy on choreography is that the making of a ballet is a team effort, and we’re in this together. It’s not me hammering on them. It’s more about how we can elevate this piece collectively to something great.
God comes to us in theater in the way we communicate with each other, whether it be a symphony orchestra, or a wonderful ballet, or a beautiful painting, or a play. It’s a way of expressing our humanity.
I was a ballet dancer and that kind of bled into musical theater. I was constantly in rehearsal for one thing or another.
My parents have always been open to me trying new things, whether it’s yoga or ballet or tap or jazz or piano or horse riding.
I grew up going to see my sister dance, both at the ballet and later as a modern dancer, and have always been a big fan of the ballet. So I have had a long relationship with dance.
The ballet world, it’s a crazy world.
The music industry is so easy compared to the ballet world.
I do piano, violin, guitar, basketball, gymnastics, ballet.
I like dramatic ballets, particularly if they’re ballets in which I have a chance to go from one extreme of style or characterization to another.
I think that ballet is very good for the body. It’s very similar to yoga, because you have to hold a position.
I grew up in the theater and danced ballet atrociously.
I think it’s particularly stupid that filmmakers have traditionally said, ‘Yeah, I like baseball, but the movie’s not going to be about the intricacies of the game.’ I mean, you wouldn’t cast an overweight guy with stubble if you were doing a ballet film.
I’m always ballet ready.
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.
I am trained, and I did do ‘The Nutcracker’ in its right form, but at the time, they told me I was black and I’d never be in ‘Swan Lake.’ I went through all those prejudices in the ballet community, and I still emerged wonderfully trained and found my way to Alvin Ailey where there were familiar faces.
I loved doing ballet. I trained for two years.
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.
Sports men and women need hip replacements. It was all those years of classical ballet and forcing turn-outs. It can be quite detrimental to your body.
Ballet companies have their ups and downs, just like the rest of us.
I’m the first one out on the dance floor. In college I had to take jazz, ballet and tap dancing, but, before that, it was just social.
I know that dancers, especially ballet dancers, can’t do it forever.
My parents were passionate about the ballet. They always played ballet music at home.
I deliberately made an effort not to become an expert on the ballet.
Not only are most of our citizens fathomlessly ignorant of the glories of American literature, a fast-growing percentage of our students are no longer taught much about any works of American art, be they novels, paintings, symphonies or ballets.
Up until I was about 12, I was a ballet dancer and a basketball player.
Ballet found me, I guess you could say. I was discovered by a teacher in middle school. I always danced my whole life. I never had any training, never was exposed to seeing dance, but I always had something inside of me. I would love to choreograph and dance around.
I’ve always been a bit of a poser. I was chucked out of ballet lessons for looking in the mirror.
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.
I always feel that the mark of a good ballet is that when you see it more than once, you get more out of it.
The real beauty of it – key to my life was playing key chords on a banjo. For somebody else it may be a golf club that mom and dad put in their hands or a baseball or ballet lessons. Real gift to give to me and put it in writing.
Dance has been a driving force in my life for 25 years. From music videos and hip hop, to jazz and musical theater, to ballet and classic modern dance, I have had extensive exposure to a variety of techniques that inspire my own electric style.
I think that ballet and skating definitely go hand in hand, especially growing up at Ballet West, which is an incredible academy.
‘The Sleeping Beauty’ is the greatest, most challenging and most vulnerable of classical ballets. Everything can go wrong with it, and all too often, everything does.
My first mentor and inspiration was my Irish Dancing teacher Patricia Mulholland. She created her own form of dance known as Irish ballet and created stage productions of old Irish myths and legends. They were my first experiences on stage. She told my mum I was destined for the stage, and I took that as my cue.
Pilates is my favorite core strengthener. I do it three or four times a week. With all the strengthening and lengthening, it’s like ballet. Plus, you get to do it lying down!
I have a personal trainer. But I tried boxing; I tried ballet. I tried everything to see what works best for my body.
Until I was in 6th grade, I took ballet, jazz, tap, and hip hop.
Ballet is an incredible art, but it can be a bit elitist, which is a really big turn off to me.
My mom was a dance teacher, so she put me in dance school when I was a kid. I did everything. I used to take ballet.
I trained as a ballet dancer – well, I started when I was two and a half, and was serious about it from when I was eight until I was 18.
I loved being at the Royal Ballet. Those choreographers, MacMillan and Ashton, they knew how to translate complicated life into choreography.
When you’re really serious about ballet, it’s a job – even if you’re 15 years old. You’re doing it six to eight hours a day.
I think that taking ballet is one of the best things a girl can do. Period.
The New York City Ballet is always about the realm of possibilities, the realm of what the human body can do, what the human spirit can do. And it’s about listening, it’s about listening to remarkable music and how we respond to that.
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.
There’s the tradition of the 19th-century ballets, and the 20th century has had a difficult time with that tradition. And it’s had a difficult time with many components of the Romantic imagination because of modernism.
My mother danced; she loved the ballet.
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.
I love ballet because you can see how beautiful the body is.
Some of my friends were going to dancing school and, when one of them was auditioning for a ballet school in Kiev, my mother saw an opportunity for me to do that, so we could move to a bigger, better city.
In authoritarian societies, cultural institutions tend to become ideological proxies – think of the National Ballet in Cuba or the East German gymnastics team.
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.
Yeah I had the poof thing before the acting because I did ballet.
I remember playing with some friends and being aware that I was acting as I was playing with them – I would think of a character and pretend to be someone else. My parents also took me to ballet school, and there I think I was able to start communicating those feelings or emotions – I danced for so many years.
I wanted to be a ballet teacher.
I originally wanted to be a ballet dancer and trained for years, but when I was around 18, I realized I wasn’t going to be as good a ballet dancer as I’d hoped I’d be and decided to become an actress instead.
I’ve always loved dancing. As soon as there is good music, I’ve got to get up and dance. I was passionate about ballet as a little girl.
It’s very difficult for me to do fund raising for my own organization if I’m working for other companies because sponsors will say, ‘Well, hey, man, if she’s doing a ballet for Ballet Theatre, we’ll give money to Ballet Theatre.’
I definitely don’t feel like I’m watching ballet during ‘Raze.’
I’d love to look like my mum when I am her age. She taught ballet for years, and my attitude to exercise and fitness has definitely been influenced by her. She’s 84 now, and I’ve watched how well she has aged, and a lot of that is to do with her fantastic posture.
I gave up ballet when I was four because I was so shy.
I think ballet has influenced my personality a lot in the sense that I am very disciplined in all of my endeavours. I am always on time; I take things very seriously. I’ve built up my inner strength and self-esteem over time as I’ve improved as a dancer.
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.
Dancing for the length of time that I did, it centered me in such a way to be really in tune with my body, and I just feel like I’m physically able to do things because of my ballet background. Without ballet, I don’t think I’d look graceful at all on screen.
I used to do ballet all the time, and I do this ballet workout: it is an amazing thing called Barrecore. It is like pulsing. It turns your legs into, like, jelly, and you feel like a Bambi; you lose so much control over your body because you’re pulsing so much.
I started with ballet, and once I started to really like it, I got into more – I did jazz and tap, and then kept going.
If they opened things up and I could build a luxury condominium in Vedado, I would sell them in two hours here in Miami. Cubans in Miami would be the first to buy. In Miami, 80 percent of the people we sell to are foreigners. Havana is a city very similar to Miami… There’s good music, good theater, good ballet.
Me in high school, I was kind of a loner. I had a handful of friends. I’d eat my lunch in my car every day in my senior year. I went to ballet. I was a ballerina, so I was very focused on that. You kind of have to be. That was two-thirds of my week, going to ballet class.
Ballet dancers really know how to enter a room.
Ballet is a finite art – your body won’t let you do it forever, so I wanted to do it while I could.
My mum was a costume designer and costume supervisor in the theater and, especially, the ballet. But that was before I was born.
I’ve been dancing my entire life. Jazz, hip hop, ballet. And then there’s tap dancing. I love to tap.
I grew up without any money, but the one thing that we did was sit up in the gods to watch the ballet.
I’ve always been a figure skater and ballet dancer. I love physical comedy, and any chance that I get to do that… that is so me.
As a dancer, I know couples that have stayed married but separated to dance on different continents. Dance in general, but ballet in particular, is such a finite career. You can’t do it later in life, and it’s something that I think a dancer has to have some selfishness to fulfill.
When life takes me on a new journey, I simply remember the smile my first ballet recital put on my face and I move forward.
I think my mom put me in tap classes when I was three, which I never pursued. I don’t know how to tap. Then we moved to Portugal when I was five, and, I think, she put me in ballet classes immediately. Then I was expelled for being too restless – I am too high energy – and was told I could go do rhythm gymnastics.
I actually hated dancing. My mum used to have to bribe me to go by buying me things. A year before I stopped going, I was going to go for an audition with the Royal Ballet. It turned out I was a year too young. Because I was tall, they thought I was older. But before I had the chance to go back, I quit.
I wanted so badly to study ballet, but it was really all about wearing the tutu.
Ballet is one form which I really want Indians to practice it.
The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.
When I was still a student, I came out of a performing arts high school, and the female students who were doing traditional dance and ballet were so beautiful. They were beautiful, starting from their postures.
The Kirov is a great ballet company because it has so many terrific dancers, but it doesn’t always know what to do with them.
I danced in corps de ballet for 11 hours a day. That was the hardest work I have ever done in my life. I haven‘t seen anybody else work more.
Before founding Ballet Beautiful, I was a ballerina with the New York City Ballet.
I was a daughterless mother. I had nowhere to put the things a mother places on her daughter. The nail polish I used to paint our toenails hardened. Our favorite videos gathered dust. Her small apron was in a box in the attic. Her shoes – the sparkly ones, the leopard rain boots, the ballet slippers – stood in a corner.
When I found out that I was going be Juliet, it felt much more real than ‘Manon,’ because ‘Manon’ is one of those ballets that you probably do after Juliet, so that never really sunk in to be honest.
All of our lives are enriched by our culture, from blockbuster films, best-selling video games, independent music, and internationally-renowned museums and art collections, to theatre, opera, ballet, literary festivals and performance poetry.
Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It’s part ballet. It’s part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage.
I was in a ballet company, and I auditioned for Bob Alton, a top choreographer at MGM. He sent me to see Arthur Freed, who offered me a seven-year contract.
Classical ballet will never die.
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.
One of the few things in dance to match the Royal Ballet’s curtain calls is the Royal Ballet’s dancing.
There are no taking days off. There are no distractions. If I had that, I physically wouldn’t be capable of going onstage and performing live theater. It’s extremely demanding. I have to be in ballet class every day.
The first show I did was ‘The Nutcracker’ ballet. I was one of the kids who comes out in the beginning.
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.
I trained as a ballet dancer till I was 18, so I would really like to get back to it. I’d love it if there was a part that meant I could do both acting and ballet, as they’re both so close to my heart.
What’s always interested me the most about ballet is it’s this great opportunity for many different artistic mediums to come together to create a cohesive experience.
I don’t feel like my life is that of a superstar! Every day I wake up, I take the train, I go to my ballet class. My everyday life is pretty normal.
Don’t hold on to the barre like, ‘I might die.’ It’s just ballet.
Each morning I do my ballet class for one hour; after that, it means one hour less to get ready.
‘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.
When working with classical musicians, it is important to be clear as possible in the score about what my intentions are. Because there isn’t a lot of rehearsal time, especially at the ballet, it’s best if everything is written in the score.
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.
You can go see ballet in its purity; you can go to a recital to hear music by itself. But what the American musical does so thrillingly is bastardize these forms into something that is exhilarating and compelling and deeply moving.
I was from Washington, D.C., and then I came to New York and got the scholarship for the ballet.
Maybe people have no idea how much work is behind a picture. It can seem very effortless, but there is a lot of work. It’s exactly like doing ballet. It’s hours and hours, but when you go onstage, it’s just the pleasure of dancing.
I had to quit ballet because it felt like a part of me was dying inside.
I always liked dancing and you’d go to class and find you had an hour acting and an hour of ballet.
I thought ‘Out of Africa’ would be a beautiful ballet.
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.
I was always the kid down the street who got the other kids to put on a show. But it was only when I was 19, and discovered ballet and contemporary dance, that I got interested in the fact that you could have a whole evening of dance – rather than just waiting for the dancers in a musical.
I taught and studied dance in college, and for over a decade, I thought that would be my career: tap dancer, ballet dancer, modern dancer. I still find myself doing some tumbling or interpretive dancing in the grocery store every now and then.
I’d like to be able to get more girls to play guitar. I think with a girl playing electric guitar, sometimes it’s seen a bit like a guy doing ballet. All the people I learned guitar from have been guys. There are some great female players, like Bonnie Raitt and Jennifer Batten, but very few.
I was sent to ballet classes when I was a little girl. I wasn’t very good, but it’s that thing where little girls always try ballet, or whatever.
I have never felt oppressed by women or that feminism is a problem. I do think boys find it hard to like things seen as feminine. I want my son not to feel self-conscious he likes ballet and my daughter to carry on playing Han Solo; that’s all.
The heart of the classical repertory is the Tchaikovsky-Petipa ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ and no ballet is harder to get right.
I didn’t really know anything about Margot Fonteyn. I’d never really been a ballet child, so I had no idea what an incredibly huge icon she was, not just in terms of a creative icon – she was also a style icon. I had no idea she was up there with Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Onassis in terms of that kind of image.
I liked the structure of ballet.
I love dancing and practiced ballet for ten years until I realized I wouldn’t make it professionally – then I started taking salsa classes. I learned to dance samba in Rio and Salvador when I lived in Brazil.
I went to art school when I was little. I took ballet lessons. I played a little kick ball. I was sort of into everything because I had too much energy and I didn’t know where to put it. When I was a preteen, I got into singing, and became really obsessed with it.
American ballet… is ultimately an evolutionary art form, requiring many voices to creatively carry forward.
I took ballet dancing forever, and there was a natural transition into acting.
I’ve learned ballet for seven years and Kathak and belly dancing for some time.
Oh, I could have done more. I refused a lot of ballets. I said, ‘No way, no way I’m going to do that.’
One of the eternal mysteries of ballet is how untalented choreographers find backers for their work, and then find good dancers to perform in it. Is it irresistible charm? Chutzpah? Pure determination? Blackmail? Or are so many supposedly knowledgeable people just plain blind?
I copied my brother. He was a natural dancer. Graceful. People always asked did we study ballet. We never did.
Too often, it is presumed that young people will only like art that they can immediately relate to. Working-class students may be steered towards popular culture like hip-hop, new media and film on the basis that they will find older art forms such as opera or ballet irrelevant.
I took ballet when I was eight, like a lot of other people.
Most ballerinas take their first ballet class when they are 5 or 6 years old. I was 13 when I took mine on the basketball court of the San Pedro Boys & Girls Club in California.
Ballet can be hard on your joints, and when you’re on a movie set doing take after take, it can become really repetitive.
My first ballet class was on a basketball court. I’m in my gym clothes and my socks trying to do this thing called ballet. I didn’t know anything about it.
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.
I came to New York to study ballet and English.
There would never have been a British Ballet without Diaghilev. He had a wonderful influence.
I was very much a tomboy. I just couldn’t do the pink ballet tutus.
I really wanted to make it as a ballet dancer to make my mom proud. But it didn’t happen.
When I was younger, people would always say, ‘Are you a ballet dancer?’ I had that look – one of those skinny kids with my hair in a bun.
Ballet was just something that I always wanted to do.
Ballet is incestuous. This world is smaller than small.
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.
Since I was a child I’ve loved going to the opera, theatre and ballet.
I’m very flower-like. I love classical music. I go to ballet and I cry. There’s nothing so beautiful.
I was in ballet classes, I took singing lessons, I started taking acting classes as a hobby. When I was younger, I had my mind set on dancing or singing.
I love going to see the theatre whether it’s a Broadway play or a Russian ballet company.
I know that I’m talented, and I know that I’m not in American Ballet Theater because I’m black – I’m here because I’m a gifted dancer.
I think it’s interesting for people to be exposed to ballet in areas they wouldn’t necessarily expect to see it.
There are some ballets you can do for a long time. With others, you have to know when to stop. Some are very destructive. Forsythe’s choreography pushes dancers to the extreme. That’s why it’s best to vary. That way, you break your body a little bit in different places, but not a lot in one place.
‘The Nutcracker’ is the ballet that keeps on giving.
In terms of withstanding incredible amounts of pain – both physical and emotional – I don’t think there’s any better training than ballet.
I’ve never danced professionally as a ballet dancer, but all of my training is ballet, and I am a Fosse dancer.
I love New York. I was in New York at the age of 13, at the School of American Ballet, walking around the subways in my little bunhead and thinking I was so cool.
I frequently go to the ballet, but I don’t miss it in the sense that I wish I were still dancing.
Ballet Hispanico is far from Irish, and, though it has strong dancers, its Spanishness has always left me unconvinced.
I like new ballets because they’re totally new. As you get older, new experiences are harder and harder to come by, so it’s pretty great to have a new experience.
We dance to difference genres such as krumping, ballet and hip-hop, together with invited foreign choreographers who are well-known internationally.
Peaky’ has attracted a lot of attention from different disciplines in the arts. It was originally going to be a ballet, which is Ballet Rambert, and there is also a lot of music artists who offer their music to the show to be used on the soundtrack.
I’ve been very physical my whole life. I’ve done a lot of ballet, fencing and karate, and everything.
I just don’t do much social media. No, it is more important to strike a balance between ballet and real life.
If I didn’t have kids, I would be at the theater or the ballet every single night of my life.
I was real into theater, and then I tried soccer, acting and ballet. Both my parents didn’t want a child-star model, so I didn’t get into modeling until I was 14.
I started as a hoofer and all-round chorus girl. I did my first ballet lesson when I was three, then trained as a dancer and went into pantomimes and summer seasons. Acting came later.
I have a ballet barre in my gym. I turn the music up so loud that the walls are pulsating, and I go for it for an hour.
You increase muscle bulk by training against resistance. For example, weights. And in ballet, this isn’t the case.
I come from a magnetic field of Catholicism. I was baptised by my mother’s family, who were all traditional Catholics. But my mother was the black sheep of the family – she ran away to the ballet at 17.
I was embarrassed that I even wanted to become an actress because coming from L.A., with two older sisters in the business and a mom who had been a ballet dancer, it was such a cliche.
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.
The world of women fascinates me, probably because my sister and I were always together as children in our mother’s salon after school and after ballet classes. We used to talk about what we saw: the different ladies who would come in, all with their distinctive personalities.
I wear Jordans when I’m in the ring, alright? This isn’t ballet, you know?
Obviously, something like ballet, you have music, you dance with the music and it’s a very direct connection. With visual art, when there’s no music that accompanies the art, such as great masterworks in a museum, you wind up interpreting what the artist is doing, how the artist made that work and what they’re conveying.
On the other hand, I think it is wonderful for everyone to take ballet classes, at any age. It gives you a discipline, it gives you a place to go. It gives you some control in your life.
It’s no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, ‘Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.’ By then, pigs will be your style.
I spent a whole year in New York without going back to France. And I always came back because my mother was living in New York since I was 13. So I went to summer camps, hang out at the Roxy, go to class for ballet, so I always had part of my life in New York.
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.
Dance is very, very old. With Louis XIV at Versailles is where ballet started.
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.
I was so comfortable with my ballet power, my dancer power, that to have a voice, the comfort with having a voice, is slower to come to me.
I am passionate about ballet.
Ballet can be grueling, for sure, but it gives you a certain discipline.
I have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer’s work is.
The ballets you do make you into the final product you are. And I had extraordinary partners.
My years of ballet and jazz dance lessons didn’t make me any more graceful – they just helped keep me from bumping into the furniture on stage.
Coco Chanel was always doing things with ballet, so it is a tradition clashing fashion and ballet.
As a little girl, I didn’t dream of being a ballet dancer; I dreamt of being a movie star like Ginger Rogers and dancing with Fred Astaire. I used to watch the Sunday double-bills on TV and Iong to be part of what seemed a perfect Disneyland world. Astaire was a genius.
Sometimes I feel as if sections of my ballets were done for me – that I didn’t do them myself.
Everything has come to me without my having to look for it. I signed with Metro because someone thought I had talent, and it was the same thing with the ballet.
I always wanted to act and sing, but my first love was ballet.
I didn’t know if I could act, but I knew I could be a great ballet dancer, and Balanchine put out the carpet for me.
Being in ballet class, being on the stage, being surrounded by my peers at American Ballet Theater every day, keeps me so humble and grounded. Being in ballet class, I feel, is like this meditation for me every morning.
I’m trying to create ballets that I would enjoy seeing.
The particular ballet was not so important as the fact that I was physically healthy, and capable of getting out there and dancing as often as possible.
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.
I will say a lot of dancers do such beautiful things for their body and then they smoke a cigarette. I’ve never been a smoker, but I realized after taking yoga . . . in ballet you’re not encouraged to do a lot of breathing. I think in a weird way, a lot of dancers find relief in actually breathing.
I do ballet and pointe work. I also do tap, commercial jazz and technical jazz, freestyle street dancing.
I had danced with Janet Jackson and P. Diddy so I had done a bunch of hip hop. Really and truly my roots are in modern and ballet but, professionally, that’s not really out there any more, unfortunately, so these artists aren’t really having a lot of ballet dancers behind them so I had to learn hip hop really quick.
There is something about Dior that reminds me of New York City Ballet. They both have a classic, glamorous basis but are trying to evolve the arts in new and innovative ways.
I don’t force myself to exercise; I find going to gyms really boring. I find it easier to go for a fast walk or a jog in Central Park. I wear sensible shoes because my ballet dancing left me with a bunion on one foot after all the pointe exercises.
To me, dance and ballet are not so accessible.
I’m so happy that I ventured out beyond the Royal Ballet – which is my home, and I love it – but I would never have pushed myself outside of my comfort zone.
I knew I wanted to be a ballet dancer, but what kind, I wasn’t sure. My two dream companies had been New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater.
I was really creative. I started to dance very young. I loved to dance. I begged my mother to put me into dance classes, and finally, in third grade, she did. Tap and jazz, but not ballet.
I always knew I was a bit different from my friends, had too much energy, and suddenly I could get it all out with ballet.
It’s amazing what a resource modern technology is now for making ballets, and I film my rehearsals almost every day.
Bob’s work gleaned from hoofing, from vaudeville, from ballet.
