I love music; I love dancing. I took, like, eight years of ballet when I was a kid, and I still love dancing. There’s been a couple of films where I was able to do some dance numbers, like ‘Romy and Michelle’ and ‘Summer of Sam,’ and I’m so happy when I get to do that.
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.
When I was younger I used to dance to lots of ballet videos.
American ballet… is ultimately an evolutionary art form, requiring many voices to creatively carry forward.
I do piano, violin, guitar, basketball, gymnastics, ballet.
My mother danced; she loved the ballet.
Between the ages of 10-14, I did ballet, modern and tap. So I may have a few dancing bones in my body, but I’m not necessarily very good rhythmically.
Fonteyn was our first proper British ballerina, and from the moment I started dancing, her image engulfed me. In my first year at the Royal Ballet School, Margot’s statue was outside my dormitory. Like generations of budding ballet dancers before me, I used to touch her middle finger for luck.
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.
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.
I only started writing in the latter days of Spandau Ballet. I didnt know I could write because all had our roles within the band.
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.
As a professional ballet dancer, I have to accept that weekends are about work. The notion of a leisurely break with all the buzz and excitement of a Friday night simply doesn’t exist for me.
I’m so fair that I didn’t go in the sun as a child. When all my friends were on the beach, I was going to ballet. The teachers there didn’t like you going in the sun, so I never did.
I always wanted to act and sing, but my first love was ballet.
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 took several years of dance lessons that included ballet, tap and jazz. They helped a great deal with body control, balance, a sense of rhythm, and timing.
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.
There would never have been a British Ballet without Diaghilev. He had a wonderful influence.
I think that every year that the New York City Ballet is alive is worthy of celebration. Because otherwise the terrible thing is just that we take it for granted.
At the ballet, you really feel like you’re in the presence of something outside the rest of your life. Higher than the rest of your life.
I grew up studying dance, taking ballet lessons.
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.
Ballet targets smaller muscles that you don’t often use – instead of working your quads, it works the inside and the back of your leg.
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.
I’ll do anything that sparks me. Sometimes I’ll want to do something random with ballet, and then I’ll want to be a hippie caterpillar in an animation film. Who knows what will come my way, but I’m going to try and put little hints into the universe, and hopefully they’ll float on by.
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.
My parents were ballet dancers, and I did a lot of ballet, too, so I think I learned quite early on how to hold my body. Although I do recall desperately wishing I was shorter at school.
Ballet, there’s a right way to do things, and it’s black and white, and it’s all striving for perfection. Acting is not that way. It’s very gray, and the messier you can be, the better. The mistakes that you make are the gold and the beautiful stuff.
I’ll never be satisfied in classical ballet. It’ll never be good enough. I’ll never be happy with most of my product.
I joined the Ballets Russes when I was 14, and my name was changed twice. I was known as Marie Istomina, then as Felia Siderova. When I went to Hollywood and made my first movie, ‘Mission to Moscow,’ in 1943, I became Lily Norwood.
With ballet, you’re really focused on the inner thigh and butt and just lifting and lengthening everything, including your arms. You’re not using weights, but holding up the weight of your own arms is a challenge.
Acting is a sense of wonder and magic and mystery for me and 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.
Classical ballet is very extreme. You’re doing it six days a week, and it’s a kind of obsession of perfecting a move. So every muscle in your body has been stretched and tightened, stretched and tightened.
Many dancers are content with the repertoire they’re given. Others are dissatisfied but don’t know why. Then there are a few like me that are curious and grab at everything. Can that curiosity thrive in the ballet world, or should it exist elsewhere? That’s the eternal question.
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.
Figure skating has been a great influence for me. I took dance at the School of American Ballet, which helped my own skating. And whether you are a skater or a dancer, without sounding narcissistic, it is all about looking in the mirror.
I wasn’t a dancer learning to play Baby Houseman. I was Baby Houseman learning to play a dancer. I was someone who’d never done any Latin dance. I’d taken jazz classes and ballet growing up in New York, so I had dance in me, and I knew I loved it, but I’d never done a dance audition.
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.
I was from Washington, D.C., and then I came to New York and got the scholarship for the ballet.
Finding ballet gave me passion for the first time in my life. I was always very shy and just wanted to fit in; I never daydreamed about what I wanted to be when I grew up. But dancing gave me a connection to my personality that made me grow.
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.
My background is somewhat unusual, as I trained to be a ballet dancer. I worked in the theatre for eight or nine years as a contemporary dancer. But as an actor one does read Shakespeare and does try to learn the classics.
There might’ve been wires, but I have this ability to make myself light. Well you know what, in ballet, when you kind of lift yourself here, it’s all up in the head.
We determine whether a book is for boys or girls long before the reader gets a chance to decide: we package them with soldiers and ballet slippers on their covers, war machines and glittering gowns.
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.
Ballet dancers are among the greatest living athletes.
I do take class because I still dance, and yes, I do slip into class with the Royal Ballet from time to time.
What is true of ballet is no less true of the other lively arts. Change is built into their natures. You watch a performance, and then… it’s gone.
I want to have daughter, and if I do, I want to make sure she learns ballet.
The last time I had to make a career decision, I was 17. I could have gone to Ballet Theatre or National Ballet of Canada. There were options. But as I became exposed to the Robbins repertoire, I realized that there was a living genius in the house.
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.
