Ballet is incestuous. This world is smaller than small.
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 think that ballet is very good for the body. It’s very similar to yoga, because you have to hold a position.
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.
I grew up in the theater and danced ballet atrociously.
My mum was a costume designer and costume supervisor in the theater and, especially, the ballet. But that was before I was born.
What ‘War and Peace’ is to the novel and ‘Hamlet’ is to the theater, Swan Lake’ is to ballet – that is, the name which to many people stands for and sums up an art form.
Ballet requires movements which are very unnatural. With every step, you do a circular movement of the hip. You turn out from the hip and make your knees point out to the side instead of forward.
My intention is to make sure that the new work being created for the ballet world is relevant.
Ballet was so structured. I’d been craving something that could guide me.
You can imagine me as a kid growing up in redneck Texas with ballet shoes, tucking the violin under my arm. I had to fight my way up.
Keep it simple. I usually have my hair up in a ballet bun and a great pair of sunglasses for when I’m on the go. On vacation, all you need is a sexy dress and great perfume, paired with a gorgeous red lip.
I really enjoyed watching a ballerina named Denise Dabrowski who used to dance at California Ballet. She was a beautiful ballerina and role model for a lot of young dancers.
I didn’t choose ballet, it was my mum’s choice.
And what would be great numbers in a Broadway show are now on stage of the New York City Ballet.
I’ve spent a lot of time playing Bach partitas. One of my first jobs was to play for ballet and modern classes, so the music in ‘Partita’ is kind of like choreography for me.
When I was in eighth standard, I have been dancing since then. I love to dance. Dance has been my life all this while. Then I became a dance instructor. I have learnt jazz, hip-hop, ballet and many other forms.
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.
The ballets you do make you into the final product you are. And I had extraordinary partners.
I definitely don’t feel like I’m watching ballet during ‘Raze.’
I went to an all-boys school, where I played rugby, so ballet wasn’t the coolest thing to do.
I think it’s really important to mix cardio with toning, so I love boxing and then add in Pilates or ballet to keep me long and lean and avoid bulking up.
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.
The Royal Ballet School looked after me very well, they were like my family, and the company gave me everything. But I was unhappy and I didn’t know how to express it.
In ballet class, I felt like Ralph Wiggum.
To me, dance and ballet are not so accessible.
Often, when you go to the movies or the theatre, you think, Jesus Christ, everybody is white. But my daughter goes to an amazing dance school called Ballet Black, and they have every colour: dark, white, mixed. It looks like the future to me.
Since babyhood, I’ve always evolved from one thing to another. My mother gave me ballet lessons at 6 as part of her enthusiasm for the arts and for life. We went to museums, to the theater. While her own talent was untapped, she worked for church causes.
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.
I joined Spandau Ballet not because I wanted to be the best musician in the world, but because I wanted to be Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando.
How can you live the high life if you do not wear high heels? I don’t understand why women wear these ballet pumps. They are only good if you walk like a ballet dancer, and only ballet dancers do that.
Ballet Hispanico is far from Irish, and, though it has strong dancers, its Spanishness has always left me unconvinced.
I went to ‘The Nutcracker’ every year with my grandma and aunt. Then, in my early teen years, I thought I wanted to be a ballet dancer. I went real gung-ho in that direction, and I started performing in ‘The Nutcracker.’
City Ballet has to develop choreographers of stature and a new approach to coaching before everything we value about it fades away and, in the great tradition of the Cheshire Cat, there’s nothing left but Peter Martins’ smile.
I never thought of myself as special or particularly good at anything. But once I started ballet, suddenly I had a new identity: prodigy.
If you have to tell a story without speaking, it’s sort of like – I come from a dance background, so it’s like a ballet where you have to tell a story with just your body. I think that’s really interesting to have to tell a story with just your face and your mannerisms, and I’d like to tap into that world.
In the world of classical ballet there are only a handful of story ballets, so getting a new one is cause for excitement.
My grandmother had a Miss Margaret’s School of Dance to teach tap and ballet to kids, but I never studied it. I was raised a Mormon and they’re dancing fools. It’s the only vice they have – dancing.
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 is such a disciplined craft and it has given me a good grounding.
Mum was a brilliant classical pianist. She was Canadian and studied music at McGill University. She took me to ballet when I was a little girl, and those are some of my happiest memories.
I announced at the dinner table when I was 11 that I wanted to be a ballet dancer. But my goal changed to musical theater after the choreographer Robert Joffrey saw me perform while I was on scholarship at the San Francisco Ballet School.
Ballet might be too formal of a title for the type of dance I do, but I love to dance. I love to draw and paint; I do ceramics and photography. I’m interested in a lot of creative stuff.
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 began to fear that the Graham work was not in lots of ways sufficient for me. I suppose it came about from looking at other dancing and being involved with the ballet – something about the air and the way she thought about dancing.
Everything seems to be going faster and faster. It’s really harder to create something that endures. The New York City Ballet has succeeded in doing that.
On an ideal Saturday night, I’ll go to the New York City Ballet, where my friends play percussion.
My dance skills are reliant on me being a bit pickled in a nightclub, if I try to do a dance move sober it doesn’t go very well, but I used to do ballet and tap so I have to be shown what do, so if I watch things I pick things up quite quickly.
I liked the structure of ballet.
I always liked dancing and you’d go to class and find you had an hour acting and an hour of ballet.
Ballet can be grueling, for sure, but it gives you a certain discipline.
I am both proud and honored to be on the Board of Directors for the Texas Ballet Theater.
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.
I was a massive fan of Amy Winehouse growing up. I decided it would be a good idea to become Amy Winehouse with the beehive and ballet shoes. Six months into that, I looked into the mirror and decided I’d better be Mia.
I’d rather be a guy that can build a house or fix a car than be able to walk like a ballet dancer.
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.
My proficiency with ballet was on a steep decline the more I skated.
Ballet is something for which you need so much control and composure. And there’s an element to acting that is the complete opposite. You have to be able to completely let go and reveal everything about yourself. It’s about being very vulnerable.
The colors of ‘The Nutcracker’ ballet score have become a part of the vocabulary of film music. It’s where so much of the 19th-century romantic music that I call upon as a film composer is rooted.
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.
