Ballet Beautiful has made my pregnancy a joy. I’ve avoided back pain and swelling by keeping my core strong and body moving.
I trained in every form of dance – started as a tap dancer when I was a kid, then contemporary, ballet, ballroom, everything. Russian, Swedish.
Yeah I had the poof thing before the acting because I did ballet.
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.
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.
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.
I remember that my mother used to take me to see ballets, especially if there were black people in them.
If nobody comes to your shows, then it’s modern dance. If everybody comes to your shows and no one likes it, is that ballet? I don’t know.
You can’t drink on an eight hour flight, pass out, and then go onstage… well you can, but then you’re Spandau Ballet.
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.
Rather than opera, football is more like ballet or a chess game. You can really see it in a team like Arsenal, especially when Dennis Bergkamp was playing. He seemed to be able to read the game like a chessboard and knew where a player would be several seconds later and put the ball there for him.
I think that taking ballet is one of the best things a girl can do. Period.
Ballet is certainly appreciated in New York, but it has been a part of the Russian culture, history and heritage for hundreds of years, so it’s much more instilled in the Russian blood.
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.
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.
You increase muscle bulk by training against resistance. For example, weights. And in ballet, this isn’t the case.
I grew up in San Francisco, and I trained as a ballet dancer until college.
Yes, bad or mediocre ballets can be useful to the dancers and temporarily fun for the audience, but in the long run, the lowering of standards can only erode the art form we all love.
I never went to a ballet until I was 45 years old. I don’t know why.
I deliberately made an effort not to become an expert on the ballet.
I wanted so badly to study ballet, but it was really all about wearing the tutu.
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.
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?'”
I’ve been very physical my whole life. I’ve done a lot of ballet, fencing and karate, and everything.
With Juliet, if you read the Shake’speare there is quite a clear idea of how she should be, but with the ballet you can get your teeth into her even more because there are loads of moments when you realise she is growing up.
At age 10, I was better at ballet than I think I will ever be at any physical activity for the rest of my life.
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.
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.
I was not influenced by concerts as a child, but I was very strongly influenced by the ballets I saw.
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’ve always just done ballet, and I feel like I’m sort of living the dream.
When I’m making a new ballet, I usually read through the score a little bit, and then I have to go back and translate or transcribe all the counts for dancers because the way that you hear it is completely different from the way the musicians read and play it.
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.
Some people think that movements, such as the movements in ballet, are a higher cultural expression, whereas some are just dirt. I think it is elitist to think that a trained movement is more acceptable than untrained and possibly unrehearsed movements.
I did ballet when I was a kid.
Dad worked in a warehouse when I was little and I didn’t see him for three years as he was doing all the overtime God gave him to buy me new ballet shoes, or a new tutu.
I grew up without any money, but the one thing that we did was sit up in the gods to watch the ballet.
I wasn’t a ballet baby. My first dance class was in an outdoor pavilion when I was three. It was called ‘creative movement.’ The teacher gave us chiffon scarves in beautiful colors. She turned on some music and said, ‘Now go dance.’ So for me, dance has always been about self-expression.
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.
Ballet is one form which I really want Indians to practice it.
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.
In fact, ballet companies did not exist in the Midwest when I was a child.
Nothing is harder to create than brilliant comic ballets, except maybe brilliant full-evening comic ballets.
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.
A producer wouldn’t think of making a film about ballet dancers without using real dancers, but they will cast actors who have never held a bat in baseball films.
I was afraid when I came to the Royal Ballet that it would be easy to have everyone walking all over me if I didn’t stick up for myself.
I was ballet dancing at four, playing piano by six, and doing commercials by 12. When I was 21, I was on the number one live comedy show in Puerto Rico. I told my parents, ‘I’m going to New York to become a performer.’ And I left.
Coco Chanel was always doing things with ballet, so it is a tradition clashing fashion and ballet.
I think ballet is pretty open about what music is used, actually.
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 amp up my workout by doing Ballet Beautiful twice a day.
When I’ve done gymnastics, ballet or soccer – I was always trying to be the best. I’m really driven. Really driven.
‘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.
I wanted to be a ballerina as a child – I had a tutu, and I used to stage my own ballets in our front room with my family as the audience.
Our first record with Spandau Ballet went to number five – I guess we were offering something different and it appealed.
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.
I cherish the ballets made for myself by Mr. Balanchine. He never lost his temper. He was quiet, humble, the genius of the 20th century.
I’ve trained in dance for most of my life, but ballet was the thing I left behind the earliest because they felt like I didn’t have the right body for it, and I didn’t like that and never felt like I could be a part of that dance structure.
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.
