Most ballets are more interesting than most men.
From the age of four, I loved ballet and tap. I was in the school band, the choir, and all my school plays.
Being a ballet dancer isn’t cool. Football, boxing, hockey… they’re cool. And you make more money.
Not only are most of our citizens fathomlessly ignorant of the glories of American literature, a fast-growing percentage of our students are no longer taught much about any works of American art, be they novels, paintings, symphonies or ballets.
You can go see ballet in its purity; you can go to a recital to hear music by itself. But what the American musical does so thrillingly is bastardize these forms into something that is exhilarating and compelling and deeply moving.
Before a show, I usually give myself two-and-a-half hours to get ready. I prepare my shoes first. New ballet pumps can sound like tap shoes. You have to take the noise out of them by hitting them against stone. It takes half an hour to do each pair, and I can go through three pairs in one night.
Me in high school, I was kind of a loner. I had a handful of friends. I’d eat my lunch in my car every day in my senior year. I went to ballet. I was a ballerina, so I was very focused on that. You kind of have to be. That was two-thirds of my week, going to ballet class.
My mom was a dance teacher, so she put me in dance school when I was a kid. I did everything. I used to take ballet.
Ballet is an incredibly difficult, beautiful art form that takes a lot of training, a lot of time, and a lot of hard work.
I wanted to be a ballet dancer. I was bad – I’m not very coordinated. But I always wished I could have been a dancer.
When you’re a child, you take things for granted. For instance, my mum didn’t have a lot of money, but I went to piano, ballet and gymnastics lessons, and tae kwon do.
I have a ballet barre in my gym. I turn the music up so loud that the walls are pulsating, and I go for it for an hour.
We moved from the suburbs to L.A. and I picked up break dancing when I was 10. I joined a dance crew in high school and I was battling. I also took ballet most of my life until high school.
I did ballet, tap and modern dance – I loved Janet Jackson with a passion – and I was good enough to star in lots of amateur shows.
I was probably around 14 or 15 when I became really conscious of those girls who were going on to the Royal Ballet school, and that I was not Royal Ballet school material, not by a long stretch.
The muscles that are used in Ballet Beautiful are similar to those used in classic ballet. They’re also muscles that don’t get used very often, which is why it burns so much.
I was in ballet classes, I took singing lessons, I started taking acting classes as a hobby. When I was younger, I had my mind set on dancing or singing.
Ballet is a closed world and very rigid; MGM was a fairyland. You’d walk down the lot, seeing all these fabulous movies being made with the greatest talent in the world sitting there. It was a dream to walk through that lot.
I copied my brother. He was a natural dancer. Graceful. People always asked did we study ballet. We never did.
I didn’t care too much for ballet, because you had to be more disciplined, and you sort of looked like everyone else. It required a certain kind of conformity that I didn’t feel like I wanted to do.
I wanted to open the dialogue about race in ballet and bring more people in. It’s just beautiful to see the interest that has exploded for such an incredible art form that I will forever be grateful to!
I had never picked up a basketball before. I went through a grueling audition process. It was almost as if I was learning to walk. It would be like teaching somebody to dance ballet for a role.
I studied dance for about 15 years, various disciplines, with classical ballet as my primary.
There’s nothing like the force and challenge of a new ballet to galvanize everyone involved in bringing it to life.
Some people are painters, and some are ballet dancers, and I’m a writer.
My first thought in life was wanting to be an actor. I was in ballet slippers and on pointe as soon as I could walk. I always wanted to be an actress, not a mother or housewife.
Slashing its way to the finish line, ‘Black Swan’ is the first ballet movie for highbrow horror fans for whom ballet itself signifies little to nothing. Those of us who know and love ballet can only look on it with a different kind of horror.
My favorite workouts are the ones that don’t feel like I’m working out! So, dance is a big one. Another is any kind of isolated moves, like ballet moves. Anything that works the glutes and legs – sign me up! And I like to blast the music. I have to get lost in the music. That helps.
She trained as a ballet dancer yet she was an iron fist in a velvet glove. My younger brother Luca and I had a wonderful childhood since she would try to guide us gently down the right path.
I began with dance, doing ballet at 3, then tap, jazz, modern. Then I sang in church choirs, learned how to play clarinet and drums, sang with rock bands and only then did I get into musical theatre.
During the day I pull on jeans and ballet flats; but I do love getting dressed up, too.
Whether it was ‘The Krays’ or ‘EastEnders’ or the songs in Spandau Ballet, if you do a good job or make something that people enjoy, that’s not something you want to move away from. I was never in a rush to get away from what people enjoyed.
I spent a whole year in New York without going back to France. And I always came back because my mother was living in New York since I was 13. So I went to summer camps, hang out at the Roxy, go to class for ballet, so I always had part of my life in New York.
