Ballet Quotes - scroll down

Dancing is wonderful training for girls. It's the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it.
-Christopher Morley-

I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them.
-Pablo Picasso-

Dancers are the athletes of God.
-Albert Einstein-

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why they call it "the present."
-Jiri Kylian-

Even if you weren't born with a genetically perfect body, you can take something like a hand, where everyone has the same capabilities, and you can make it speak. You can make it speak in many different ways.
-Sarah Lamb-

To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.
-Agnes De Mille-

I get into the studio and I try to make visible what’s in the choreographer’s mind. Sometimes a choreographer wants you to have an idea, and sometimes you are the idea.
-Angel Corella, The Ballet Book-

A child sings before it speaks, dances almost before it walks. Music is in our hearts from the beginning.
-Pamela Brown-

Dance for yourself. If someone understands, good. If not, then no matter. Go right on doing what you love.
-Lois Hurst-

The ballet is a purely female thing. It is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener.
-George Balanchine-

Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's looking.
-Unknown-

Plie is the first thing you learn and the last thing you master.
-Suzanne Farrell-

Our pointe shoes are our instruments. If something’s wrong with my feet, all my mind goes there. I usually have six pairs ready. Soft shoes for one act, stiffer shoes for another, stronger shoes for a variation with a lot of turns.
-Nina Ananiashvili, The Ballet Book-

Many other women kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.
-Agnes de Mille-

I think most dancers would agree that the art of ballet chooses the dancer, not the other way around.
-Kevin McKenzie-

Beginning dancer. Knows nothing.
Intermediate dancer. Knows everything. Too good to dance with beginners. Hotshot dancer. Too good to dance with anyone.
Advanced dancer. Dances everything. Especially with beginners.
-Unknown-

Dancing is the poetry of the foot.
-John Dryden-

Dance is bigger than the physical body. Think bigger than that. When you extend your arm, it doesn't stop at the end of your fingers, because you're dancing bigger than that: your dancing spirit.
-Judith Jamison-

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence.
-Samuel Johnson-

Ballet is not just movement, not simply abstract. It’s something beautiful. Sometimes there’s this feeling in the movement that makes me want to cry.
-Nina Ananiashvili, The Ballet Book-

Fine dancing, I believe like virtue, must be its own reward. Those who are standing by are usually thinking of something very different.
-Jane Austen-

A dance is a measured pace, as a verse is a measured speech.
-Francis Bacon-

Dance is music made visible.
-George Balanchine-

The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.
-George Balanchine-

There are shortcuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.
-Vicki Baum-

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.
-Mikhail Baryshnikov-

Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals.
-Charles Baudelaire-

Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order.
-Samuel Beckett-

Try everything once except incest and folk dancing.
-Sir Thomas Beecham-

Ballet is not technique but a way of expression that comes more closely to the inner language of man than any other.
-George Borodin-

While I dance, I cannot judge. I cannot hate. I cannot separate myself from life. I can only be joyful and whole. That is why I dance.
-Hans Bos-

Just remember when you're not practicing that someone somewhere is and when you meet them, they will win.
-Jaques d'Amboise-

So, I think I would say, enjoy the process of learning to dance. The process of our profession, and not its final achievement, is the heart and soul of dance.
-Jacques d'Amboise-

When someone blunders, we say that he makes a misstep. Is it then not clear that All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill our history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill in dancing.
-Moliere-

Dance is the art form; the body is the instrument. Learn to play the instrument so you can master the art form.
-Debbie Dee-

It always takes two. There’s the speaker and the listener, you and the audience. You’ve worked long hours and it comes down to that moment, that performance. The goal isn’t just to improve yourself, but to transport people.
-Gillian Murphy, The Ballet Book-

You don't have to know about ballet to enjoy it, all you have to do is look at it.
-Edwin Denby-

Dancing: The highest intelligence in the freest body.
-Isadora Duncan-

There are likewise three kinds of dancers: first, those who consider dancing as a sort of gymnastic drill, made up of impersonal and graceful arabesques; second, those who, by concentrating their minds, lead the body into the rhythm of a desired emotion, expressing a remembered feeling or experience. And finally, there are those who convert the body into a luminous fluidity, surrendering it to the inspiration of the soul.
-Isadora Duncan-

If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.
-Isadora Duncan-

The following hints on ballroom etiquette may be of use to persons unacquainted with dancing, or who have not been accustomed to attending balls with ladies:
• It is improper for two gentlemen to dance together when ladies are present.
• While dancing, a lady should consider herself engaged to her partner, and therefore she is not at liberty to hold a flirtation, between figures, with another gentleman.
• If you cannot waltz gracefully, do not attempt to waltz at all.
• In waltzing, a gentleman should exercise the utmost delicacy in touching the waist of his partner.
• When a young lady declines dancing with a gentleman, it is her duty to give him a reason no matter how frivolous the excuse may be.
• If a lady refuses to dance with you, bear the refusal with grace; and if you perceive her afterwards dancing with another, seem not to notice it.
-Thomas Hillgrove's A Complete Practical Guide to the Art of Dancing, Dick & Fitzgerald, New York, 1864-

There are three steps you have to complete to become a professional dancer: learn to dance, learn to perform, and learn how to cope with injuries.
-D. Gere-

Technical perfection is insufficient. It is an orphan without the true soul of the dancer.
-Sylvie Guillem-

Dance is the loftiest, most moving, most beautiful of the arts, because it is not a mere translation or abstraction of life; it is life itself!
-Martha Graham-

Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery.
-Martha Graham-

It takes ten years, usually, to make a dancer. It takes ten years of handling the instrument, handling the material with which you are dealing, for you to know it completely.
-Martha Graham-

Bravura has nothing to do with technique. It’s all about timing and oozing life.
-Kevin McKenzie, The Ballet Book-

The noble entitlement bespeaks an élan, a certain type of relationship with your partner. It means formidable technique not displayed lightly. The excitement comes from elegance.
-Kevin McKenzie, The Ballet Book-

Learning to walk sets you free. Learning to dance gives you the greatest freedom of all: to express your whole self, the person you are.
-Melissa Hayden-

He who cannot dance puts the blame on the floor.
-Hindu proverb-

It takes an athlete to dance, but an artist to be a dancer.
-Shanna LaFleur-

Even the ears must dance.
-Natalie Makarova-

The Marquesan girls dance all over; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads.
-Herman Melville-

Technique--bodily control--must be mastered only because the body must not stand in the way of the soul's expression.
-La Meri-

Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible.
-Agnes de Mille-

The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie.
-Agnes de Mille-

Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
-Agnes de Mille-

Master technique and then forget about it and be natural.
-Anna Pavlova-

Everyday there must be something I can't do, otherwise it's boring.
-Maret Robier-

Dance is the only art in which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made.
-Ted Shawn-

To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.
-Jack Handey-