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.
It’s hard to change someone’s ideas when they might not even really consciously know that they’re being racist, or have racist ideas, just because ballet has been this way for hundreds of years.
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.
Ballet Beautiful is really good for me, and it doesn’t hurt my back, and it’s a way for me to kind of get my heart moving and tone every part of my body.
I trained as a dancer when I was much younger, for a large amount of time, like 6 or 7 years. Not to be a ballet dancer, actually, but I thought it was a complement for an actor. I thought that actors should know how to move, should know how to juggle, should know how to do acrobatics.
I think it’s interesting for people to be exposed to ballet in areas they wouldn’t necessarily expect to see it.
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 have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer’s work is.
‘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 personal trainer is an ex-dancer so we do a lot of ballet and jazz.
I was introduced to theater by a teacher that found me when I was in elementary school. She tested me for the Gifted and Talented program, started taking me to see the ‘Nutcracker Ballet.’ I got involved.
My way into everything was through the theater. There are so many plays that I saw growing up that just made me realize that I wanted to be on stage doing that. So it was definitely through ballet, and then stage, and then theater and acting. And then I kind of made my way to film.
I was always given the comedy role, even in the ballet. I was the one who fell off her points, you know? I love doing comedy, and I love being in things that make people laugh.
When I was a little girl I wanted to be a dancer. I studied ballet.
I didn’t study dance. I had some ballet lessons because I needed it for posture and for my arms, mostly. My skating coach said I really needed it, from the belly button up, as opposed to the footwork. In skating, the shoes don’t move.
I’d always been one of the best in my gymnastics school, so I transferred to trying to be the best dancer, without knowing anything about ballet. I learned it as a routine.
Designing and creating dance clothes has taken my love for dancewear to a whole other level, melding the creative process with my daily fashion and allowing me to bring my most dreamed-about ballet styles to life.
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.
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. I wanted to become a professional ballet dancer.
What guarantees – or at least semi-guarantees – good ballets is good choreographers, and they are thin on the ground.
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?
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 wear short shorts. After 10 years of strenuous ballet, it’s the least my legs can do for me.
Ballet needs figures that people can recognize and relate to. People don’t know ballet dancers as well as they know other artists.
I think Hong Kong’s ballet audience is very sophisticated in the sense that they are able to find the beauty in good performances.
An artistic standpoint – I’ve watched a lot of ballet and source some inspiration from how they move, connect with each other, and find meaning in their movement.
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.
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.
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.
There’s only a certain amount of space in every ballet company. You’re basically on a team. You want to succeed as a group but all want to have the same roles.
In theatre or in ballet, the ballerina always passes on what they know. It’s a hands-on craft. You can’t really learn the soul and the pathos of it if you just see a video. It has to be taught by someone who is in the know.
I think the leotard for me became, after I retired, a sort of a symbol of the confines of still fitting into the ballet world in mind and body.
The bulk of life on Earth lives in a peaceful place where the temperature is stable. There’s hunting going on, but it’s very civilized, like a slow ballet.
I try and avoid cardio because it makes me lose a lot of weight. Instead, I do resistance training, model fit workouts, and ballet.
I still love to see the ballet. And I love to boogie.
I do after-school ballet and also hip-hop and jazz.
There’s no agents or managers to represent them. Dancers don’t have any voice. They have nothing. Nobody can afford a flat to live in. They have to share to be able to survive. In a place like the Royal Ballet, that shouldn’t happen.
You should have seen me at 14, with braces and glasses, gangly and doing ballet!
I had classical training at London’s Royal Ballet School, and my first job was with the Semperoper Dresden ballet company in Germany.
I took tap and ballet, which likely contributed to my sense of rhythm and showmanship. I love creating music that gets people moving together, free of inhibitions.
For every dancer, no matter how amazing your career, there’s more to life than ballet. Being adored by your audience, it’s only part of the story.
My dream was to become a ballet dancer, but after a year in bed with rheumatic fever at 13, I had grown too tall, and had no muscle tone left. I tried a ballet class and couldn’t even do a plie without falling over. It was my first death.
As for the once-revolutionary ‘Agon,’ after more than half a century, its lessons and revelations have been so absorbed into the language of ballet that it now seems almost conventional.
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 was a dancer from a young age. My parents were dancers; we were taken to a lot of ballet as children. It occurred to me that what I liked more than dancing the steps was acting the story of whatever particular performance I was taking part in.
My training and ballet background definitely gives me the competitive edge on the ice.
So I’m studying ballet every day and really training so people will see me as a ballet dancer, which no one’s seen before.
Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don’t want to unravel that mystery.
I grew up listening to hipster jazz and classical records… we went and watched ballet and orchestras – lots of cool stuff. Which I’m really grateful for – it’s pretty nice being introduced to that when you’re little.
I did ballet, tap, jazz, modern, I taught dance here in my hometown of St. Louis.
A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I’m beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.
All the New York City Ballet does is hit beautiful home runs.
The idea for ‘Ballet Baby’ started when I was going through my own pregnancy.
I’m very flower-like. I love classical music. I go to ballet and I cry. There’s nothing so beautiful.
I used to dance when I was younger – ballet and modern dance.
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.
