Ballet is a healthy world despite what people might think. There’s a perception that ballet dancers are skinny and unhealthy, but that’s rubbish. You have to be strong, so eating regularly and healthily is essential.
The first time I took a plane to dance in front of an audience outside France was when I was in the Paris Opera Ballet School, and we flew to Japan.
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 taking ballet lessons when I was 4, and I was performing in ballet companies when I was 10, and I did summer stock in Miami Beach when I was 12, and finally I said, ‘I gotta go to Broadway.’
So much is made about the beginnings of ballet careers, the rosebud, and then once the petals and leaves start falling off, is it beautiful anymore? Some people think it is; some people don’t. The expectation is to focus on the very beautiful parts, not the ending.
At Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet Academy, I studied under a brilliant and fiery teacher. This tiny, stuttering old man flew into a rage if his students’ white socks failed to reach mid-calf level. Nor could he tolerate floppy hair. We wore hairnets to class – an athletic brigade of short order cooks.
With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself.
Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s version of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is my favorite full-length ballet, Sergei Prokofiev’s breathtaking score a favorite composition of music. As a student of martial arts, I loved drawing my sword in defense of my Capulet kin.
Manon’ still feels like it didn’t really happen, because it is such a mammoth ballet and I can’t believe I did that.
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 went to Westside School of Ballet in L.A. and I was climbing through the ranks. Then I got to pointe shoes and I was like, ‘This is not cool, you guys. This is gonna be in textbooks, someday, along with Chinese foot-binding.’ Anyway, it’s not for me, so I got into doing different kinds of dance.
We do ballet dancing, Irish dancing, Scottish, jazz, tap – whatever country we’re in or whatever culture that we’d like to present to the children.
Wrestling isn’t like ballet; it’s not about practicing a routine. You need to focus. You need to concentrate. You need to know your craft.
My company, Ballet Beautiful, is built around celebrating the strength and femininity of the female body – for me, pregnancy has just been an extension of that.
It’d be very difficult to cast me as a ballet dancer. Everybody is, in some sense, controlled by their size and their gender. I’m not going to be allowed to play the part that Denzel Washington plays.
I love all of the ballets that have a really strong story in them where I get to play a character. I don’t enjoy the ones that are more technical without a story line and it’s just me on stage dancing.
I had been a ballet dancer and never could make a living, and just being so excited that I got to, all of a sudden, live as an actor.
Twyla Tharp set her sights on ballet, and ballet, hungry for major talent, succumbed.
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 gave up ballet when I was four because I was so shy.
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.
In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell… we can’t dance synonyms.
Whoever thought of making ballet? I mean, what is it? It’s so alien. You just look at people’s behavior as well – people trying to show off on stage and people clapping.
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 don’t know if I would write an opera, maybe because of the words. But yes, I would be really excited to do it. I would certainly write a ballet or… I’ve done a lot of stage before.
My family was artistic and encouraged me to express myself. I was a show-off, so they took me to ballet class.
I was surrounded by classical music, art and ballet all these things. But they also had a football field and it was at the conservatoire I decided to be a footballer.
I used to love tap, that was favourite, and a bit of street dancing. Ballet I tried to avoid.
People say that wrestling is not ballet. But as a former ballerina, I’d like to see some of these men put on a pair of tights and go do what a dancer does. Because it’s a lot! It’s definitely difficult.
I came from the musical stage. My first show was ‘110 In The Shade.’ I started as a ballet dancer and then sort of gravitated toward musical theater, so any time I got asked to sing or dance, it was a joy for me.
I loved being at the Royal Ballet. Those choreographers, MacMillan and Ashton, they knew how to translate complicated life into choreography.
The mystery of Christopher Wheeldon deepens. Yes, he’s the most talented of the younger ballet choreographers – indeed, where’s the competition? Yes, he’s particularly good at nurturing dancers and identifying their essential qualities.
The first year with ABT I learned 13 new roles. Most were lengthy ballets, more complicated than I was used to. I have suffered from tendinitis since I was 13, and it flared up again until the pain was paralyzing. There were times I prayed I’d be sick so I wouldn’t have to go on.
I was very much a tomboy. I just couldn’t do the pink ballet tutus.
My childhood was a mix of ballet classes and debating society. I liked arguing. As a teenager, I wanted to be an author. Later on, inspired by Young Enterprise and the Body Shop founder Anita Roddick, I decided I wanted to go into business.
I went to the Performing Arts School and studied classical ballet. That attitude is something that’s put into your head. You are never thin enough.
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.
There was never really a moment that I decided that I wanted to be a ballet dancer. It’s always just felt like it’s what I was meant to do.
I take ballet class as often as possible – up to 5 times a week – and try to go to the gym on the days that I don’t take class. I also do a floor barre/Pilates mat class almost everyday.
I remember my dreams when I was a junior soloist. ‘Oh, I hope I don’t end here,’ I thought. ‘I want to do the ballerina in ‘Scotch Symphony.’ I don’t want to be the little Scotch girl.’ And I actually went beyond my wildest dreams. I worked with Balanchine. I had ballets choreographed for me.
My mum took me to the ballet at three, and that was the only time I sat still, with jaw open, mesmerised. She brought me home, and I wouldn’t stop dancing.
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.
Ballet Beautiful is a workout that transforms the body without overtaxing the system or joints.
I live in the Dark Ages, the 17th century. Actually, I would have loved to be in Paris in the early 20th century when the Ballets Russes were there and Chanel was designing.
I trained as a ballet dancer and fell in love with Rudolf Nureyev; I thought him the most beautiful creature. My mum had to break it to me that not only was he gay, but he was dead.
I was the oldest of the children in my family. I had to do a lot of diaper-changing and lunch-making. I was taking my little sister to ballet, picking up my brother, sort of being a super-nanny.
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 is completely unnatural to the body, just being turned-out… it’s not the way your body is supposed to function, so you actually train your body to be a different structure than you were born with.
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.
‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is one of George Balanchine’s greatest creations – and one of the greatest of all story ballets.
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.
I went to Indiana University for college for a couple of years, where I double majored in dance and journalism, and after my sophomore year there, I went to the San Francisco Ballet school for the summer, but then they offered me a scholarship to stay for the year.
