Best 390 quotes in «ballet quotes» category

I made the sympathetic face, and the interested face, and even the impressed face. I did not say, 'In the name of all that is holy, cease this incessant drivel, you pretentious ass.

It [ballet] is a perfect medium for the expression of spiritual love.

I kept wanting to go back on the stage and do it again since I had so much fun and felt so accomplished. It seemed that I had regained a lot of the confidence that I knew I had years before when I performed onstage all the time.

I knew that I just didn't have it in me to give up, even if I sometimes felt like a fool for continuing to believe.

It [ballet] projects a fragile kind of strength and a certain inflexible precision.

It's time to write our own story.

Music does not need language of words for it has movements of dance to do its translation.

Most men suck at communicating, Abby. Like, they seriously suck at it. I've been married for over thirty years and I can say this with great certainty.

Slowly he walked into the room. Stalked, actually. That was the primitive side of him, how he felt. She didn’t move. She simply watched him approach. “I was afraid you weren’t coming,” Abby whispered after a moment and Dean caught the double entendre. “Sweetheart, trust me when I say that where you’re concerned, that’s never going to be a problem.

Sempre, cazzo, sempre un passo indietro. Sempre un minuto in ritardo. Sempre un sogno avanti. Non voglio che sia così anche con Abbi. Sono determinato a non restare dietro di lei, ma nemmeno davanti. La conosco solo da tre settimane e ho ancora fresca nella memoria la prima volta che l’ho vista. Voglio starle accanto, passo dopo passo. All’unisono con lei. A lezione. Sul palcoscenico. Per strada. Nei passi di danza e nei passi di tutti i giorni.

Soar like an eagle beyond skies of heavens reach; as wings of dreams dance with winds of reality.

Miss Dearheart gave him a very brief look, and shook her head. There was movement under the table, a small fleshy kind of noise and the drunk suddenly bent forward, colour draining from his face. Probably only he and Moist heard Miss Dearheart purr: ‘What is sticking in your foot is a Mitzy “Pretty Lucretia” four-inch heel, the most dangerous footwear in the world. Considered as pounds per square inch, it’s like being trodden on by a very pointy elephant. Now, I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking, “Could she press it all the way through to the floor?” And, you know, I’m not sure about that myself. The sole of your boot might give me a bit of trouble, but nothing else will. But that’s not the worrying part. The worrying part is that I was forced practically at knifepoint to take ballet lessons as a child, which means I can kick like a mule; you are sitting in front of me; and I have another shoe . Good, I can see you have worked that out. I’m going to withdraw the heel now.’ There was a small ‘pop’ from under the table. With great care the man stood up, turned and, without a backward glance, lurched unsteadily away. ‘Can I bother you?’ said Moist. Miss Dearheart nodded, and he sat down, with his legs crossed. ‘He was only a drunk,’ he ventured. ‘Yes, men say that sort of thing,’ said Miss Dearheart.

Sweetheart, wherever you are, that’s where I’ll be. Forever.

That day and night, the bleeding and the screaming, had knocked something askew for Esme, like a picture swinging crooked on a wall. She loved the life she lived with her mother. It was beautiful. It was, she sometimes thought, a sweet emulation of the fairy tales they cherished in their lovely, gold-edged books. They sewed their own clothes from bolts of velvet and silk, ate all their meals as picnics, indoors or out, and danced on the rooftop, cutting passageways through the fog with their bodies. They embroidered tapestries of their own design, wove endless melodies on their violins, charted the course of the moon each month, and went to the theater and the ballet as often as they liked--every night last week to see Swan Lake again and again. Esme herself could dance like a faerie, climb trees like a squirrel, and sit so still in the park that birds would come to perch on her. Her mother had taught her all that, and for years it had been enough. But she wasn't a little girl anymore, and she had begun to catch hints and glints of another world outside her pretty little life, one filled with spice and poetry and strangers.

The flowing movements and relaxing music softens the sense and release the soul. This way my students not only enjoy moving their bodies with ease, but they also have the satisfaction of knowing that they can benefit from this Art for as long as they shall live (that I presume will be much longer than the expected if they continue on their routine of practicing my "BalletTao") At my primary school, a colleague was reading a text out loud when he kicked this word: Ballet, which is pronounced with a soundless T. He hesitated and then read: Ballet accentuating the T in the end. It sounded like: Ballet-Chi. Who would guess that one day I would accept this as the correct way to use this word?" The Dao Workbook Illustrated

The stares were annoying, but I knew they didn’t mean any harm. So, every morning, smiling at them became part of my routine, too.

This book's like black holes. It really engulfes you whole.

We act as a conduit for the observers’ unexpressed desires, the silent appreciation they may contain for anything; a lover, a river, a building even

When the doctors came in a little while later saying they thought they knew my diagnosis, I was afraid to know.

When the melody plays, footsteps move, heart sings and spirit begin to dance.

World seems like a void of silence every time footsteps are deprived of dancing shoes.

Yet for a moment it seemed to him that the men who had dragged marble from Italy and porphyry from Portugal, who had ransacked the jungle for its rarest woods and paid their millions to build this opulent and fantastical theatre, had done so in order that a young girl with loose brown hair should move across its stage, drawing her future from its empty air.

A dance performance is rather like going out into a battlefield. You have to hold the attention of as many as five to 10,000 people a lot of whom do not follow your language.

Stabbings, shooting, rapes, homicides -- the denizens of places like the Elk brought those crimes along with them the way ordinary travelers carried luggage.

You consider me for a moment, perhaps balancing the weight of your fear against the loneliness you will later feel in your room if you do not speak now

A brand-new pair of toe shoes presents itself to us as an enemy with a will of its own that must be tamed.

A dancer, more than any other human being, dies two deaths: the first, the physical when the powerfully trained body will no longer respond as you would wish. After all, I choreographed for myself. I never choreographed what I could not do. I changed steps in Medea and other ballets to accommodate the change. But I knew. And it haunted me. I only wanted to dance.

All ballet, all reading, all music. That was my world, my inner world.

A fine picture is but the image of nature; a finished ballet is nature herself.

Although we do come from a silent profession, it is important for us to verbalize what we want to say. (As I tell my students): you could love someone all your life, but if you never say it how are they going to know? There comes a point when you have to say what you mean, which makes you scream louder when you dance.

A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.

Americans will be amazed to find ho many of the modern dance steps are relics of the African heritage.

All dancers have a cumulative tendency, because each beat of the tom-tom has an almost irresistible appeal. Soon, those who were just spectators would dance too.

A mistake is simply another way of doing things

Another friend began to say, "Well, Quentin has a problem of adjusting himself to society and he..." This sentence was never finished. The ballet teacher expostulated, "I don't agree. Quentin does exactly as he pleases. The rest of us have to adapt ourselves to him.

Always the question for dancers is: Can we fly?

Applause lavished at a whim and without discernment, often proves the ruin of young people training for a stage career.

As a child I often wondered whether I would be allowed to live such moments- to inhabit the slow, majestic ballet of the snowflakes, to be released at last from the dreary frenzy of time. Is that what it feels to be naked? All one's clothes are gone, yet one's mind is overladen with finery.

A pas de deux is a dialogue of love. How can there be conversation if one partner is dumb?

And then he danced,-all foreigners excel the serious Angels in the eloquence of pantomime;-he danced, I say, right well, with emphasis, and a'so with good sense-a thing in footing indispensable: he danced without theatrical pretence, not like a ballet-master in the van of his drill'd nymphs, but like a gentleman.

As I got older, I started to do it more and more, and I wanted to learn all of the different types. I grew up doing modern, so I wanted to learn ballet, tap, jazz, and African - just everything.

As time goes on, all schools only get left alive if they have found something special themselves.

A toe shoe is as eccentric as the ballerina who wears it: their marriage is a commitment.

As soon as I hear music, something in me starts to vibrate.

As a kid, I had a lot of energy; but the ballet lessons made me calm - this pleased my mother.

At the beginning, ballet accounted for at least two hours out of six hours of my daily training session. Later I devoted less time to ballet, but every workout of mine included training in choreography.

At our theaters we only see feeble copies of the copies that have proceeded them, renounce that slavish routine which keeps your art in its infancy; examine everything relative to the development of talents; be original; form a style for yourselves based on your private studies; if you must copy, imitate nature, it is a noble model and never misleads those who follow it.

At the time I started in ballet they were dancing 'The Spirit of Champagne' on pointe, in Paris. I thought, 'I don't want to dance the spirit of champagne, I want to drink it!

Back in high school, about two years ago, I was in this silly punk band called Ballet for Athletes. We were all trying to take it seriously, and then I realized that "punk" and "serious" aren't really two words you can put in the same sentence - at least, in my opinion.

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.