Ballets Quotes

Mr. Balanchine wanted me to be myself. He didn't want me to look like anyone else. I love teaching our company dancers the Balanchine ballets. I try to give them what was passed down to me and what I learned from him. They dance it so beautifully. It also keeps me close to Mr. Balanchine. He's with me every single day. ~ Patricia McBride

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. ~ Terry Teachout

When you dance, it takes a lot of stamina, but it never seemed like work 'cause I was doing something that I so loved doing. It was always a joy. And you know, to have beautiful ballets made specially for you is such an honor. I always said it was better than diamonds. ~ Patricia McBride

If our ballets be feeble, monotonous and dull, if they be devoid of ideas, meaning, expression and character, it is less the fault of the art than that of the artist. ~ Jean-Georges Noverre

Dancing and ballets would undoubtedly take on a new lease on life, if the customs established by a spirit of fear and jealousy did not in some way close the path of glory ... ~ Jean-Georges Noverre

I like dramatic ballets, particularly if they're ballets in which I have a chance to go from one extreme of style or characterization to another. ~ Suzanne Farrell

'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. ~ Robert Gottlieb

For Russians, to whom Pushkin's poem 'Eugene Onegin' is sacred text, the ballet's story and personae are as familiar and filled with meaning as, for instance, 'Romeo' and 'Hamlet' are for us. Russians know whole stretches of it by heart, the way we know Shakespeare and Italians know Dante. ~ Robert Gottlieb

The ballets you do make you into the final product you are. And I had extraordinary partners. ~ Patricia McBride

As long as my ballets are danced, I will live ~ Rudolf Nureyev

I have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer's work is. ~ Mikhail Baryshnikov

Most ballets are more interesting than most men. ~ Patricia McBride

I suppose I'm the only person who remembers one of the most exciting of his ballets-it's the fruit of an unlikely collaboration between Nijinsky on the one hand and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the other. ~ Alan Bennett

I will be like Nijinksi, who was taken last year to the Russian ballet, and could not comprehend what spectacle he was viewing. I will be alone, quite alone in myself, indifferent to all the world's ballets. ~ Andre Breton

The very essence of ballet is poetic, deriving from dreams rather than from reality. About the only reason for its existence is to enable us to remain in the world of fantasy and escape from the people we rub shoulders with in the street. Ballets are the dreams of poets taken seriously. ~ Theophile Gautier

Nothing is harder to create than brilliant comic ballets, except maybe brilliant full-evening comic ballets. ~ Robert Gottlieb

I was not influenced by concerts as a child, but I was very strongly influenced by the ballets I saw. ~ Bebe Neuwirth

When you can't follow a ballet's action, you can always read the program notes. ~ Robert Gottlieb

One of the few things in dance to match the Royal Ballet's curtain calls is the Royal Ballet's dancing. ~ Clive Barnes

In addition to the little ecosystem developing around my raft, I am constantly surrounded by a display of natural wonders. The acrobatic dorados perform beneath ballets of fluffy white clouds. The clouds glide across the sky until they join at the horizon to form whirling, flaming sunsets that are slowly doused by nightfall. Then, as if the sun had suddenly crashed, thousands of glistening galaxies are flung out into deep black night. There is no bigger sky country than the sea. But I cannot enjoy the incredible beauty around me. It lies beyond my grasp, taunting me. Knowing it can be stolen from me at any time, by a Dorado or shark attack or by a deflating raft, I cannot relax and appreciate it. It is beauty surrounded by ugly fear. I write in my log that it is a view of heaven from a seat in hell. ~ Steven Callahan

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. ~ Robert Caro

There's the tradition of the 19th-century ballets, and the 20th century has had a difficult time with that tradition. And it's had a difficult time with many components of the Romantic imagination because of modernism. ~ Twyla Tharp

Art begs you to notice it. Why? Because art is God's way of saying hello. So pay attention to poetry. Pay attention to music. Pay attention to paintings and sculptures and photo exhibits and ballets and plays. Don't let all this go unnoticed. Your world is shouting out to you, revealing something intrinsically glorious about itself. Listen carefully. Love art, the way art loves life. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

What guarantees - or at least semi-guarantees - good ballets is good choreographers, and they are thin on the ground. ~ Robert Gottlieb

Dance in the most perishable of the arts. Ballets are forgotten, ballerinas retire, choreographers die
and what remains of that glorious production which so excited us a decade ago, a year ago, or even last night? ~ Jack Anderson

[...] all expressions of creativity have a structure at work within them, most particularly those who adhere to a classical form. All romances are the same in the same way that all choreographed ballets are the same. Each ballet is a written sequence of the same steps, but each performance is remarquably different [...] ~ Sarah Wendell

Opera halls, ballets, and large art museums receive more funding
and not all from the government
than do popular art and what might be considered popular music venues ... But there are plenty of innovative musicians ... who have had as much trouble surviving as symphony orchestras and ballet companies ... Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past? ... The 2011 annual operating budget for the New York Metropolitan Opera is $325 million; a big chunk of that, $182 million, came from donations from wealthy patrons. ~ David Byrne

I'm trying to do things I have never done. Like I recently went to 3 different ballets. And I loved trying to learn how to like those a little bit. ~ Brian Regan

The best gift I was ever given was the arts. My mum gave me those on a silver platter. Growing up, her and my grandmother would take me to ballets, classical concerts, even smoky jazz clubs I wasn't supposed to be in! ~ Jill Scott

Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history. ~ Susan Sontag

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. ~ Iris Apfel

Tolstoy may be right about happy and unhappy families, but in ballet, it works the opposite way: All good ballets are different from each other and all bad ones are alike, at least in one crucial respect - they're all empty. ~ Robert Gottlieb

Of course, from one point of view the unhappy events of our own century might be regarded as, say, demonstration ballets on the theme 'Hydrocarbon Synthesis' with strong audience participation. ~ J.G. Ballard

Sometimes I feel as if sections of my ballets were done for me - that I didn't do them myself. ~ Antony Tudor

All Ballets' fundamental steps are derived from the folk dances of Western Europe. ~ Ninette De Valois

Yes, bad or mediocre ballets can be useful to the dancers and temporarily fun for the audience, but in the long run, the lowering of standards can only erode the art form we all love. ~ Robert Gottlieb