George Balanchine Quotes

Storyless is not abstract. Two dancers on the stage are enough material for a story; for me, they are already a story in themselves

If you don't feel challenged, it's because you're not doing enough. Ballet should never feel comfortable. Comfortable is lazy! If you're comfortable when you dance, you're not pushing yourself hard enough. 100 % is not enough. You have to give 200%. One tendu takes years of hard work and will never be perfect. Everything in ballet is a challenge.

The woman's function is to fascinate men.

Your eyes is camera and your brain is a file cabinet.

We must first realize that dancing is an absolutely independent art, not merely a secondary accompanying one. I believe that it is one of the great arts ... The important thing in ballet is the movement itself. A ballet may contain a story, but the visual spectacle ... is the essential element. The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they reach the audience through the eye. It's the illusion created which convinces the audience, much as it is with the work of a magician.

Someone once said that dancers work just as hard as policeman, always alert, always tense. But i dont agree with that because policeman don't have to look beautiful at the same time *

What are you waiting for? Now is all there is!

The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener.

First comes the sweat. Then comes the beauty if you're very lucky and have said your prayers.

I've got more energy now than when I was younger because I know exactly what I want to do.

I don't have a past. I have a continuous present. The past is part of the present, just as the future is. We exist in time.

I cannot move, I cannot even want to move, unless I hear the music first.

Dance is music made visible

Ballet dancing is arduous, strenuous activity. Students are engaged in physical training that rivals the training Olympic athletes undergo. At the same time, they strive for physical perfection not for the prowess alone but as a way of achieving the means necessary to express the pure nature of their art.

I could never make a ballet by wrinkling my brow and concentrating. If you set out deliberately to make a masterpiece, how will you ever get it finished?

In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell ... we can't dance synonyms.

I like to do things certain ways and I disagree with everybody but I don't even want to argue.

See the music, hear the dance.

God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it - from what I see, from what the dancers can do, from what others do.

Put a man and a girl on stage and there is already a story; a man and two girls, there's already a plot.

My muse must come to me on union time.

One is born to be a dancer. No teacher can work miracles, nor will years of training make a good dancer of an untalented pupil. One may be able to acquire a certain technical facility, but no one can ever 'acquire an exceptional talent.' I have never prided myself on having an unusually gifted pupil. A Pavlova is no one's pupil but God's.

I am a cloud - in trousers.

Ballet is important and significant - yes. But first of all, it is a pleasure.

I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance.

Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned.