Ballet Quotes

“Dancing is creating a sculpture that is visible only for a moment.”
― Erol Ozan

“Respect your body. Eat well. Dance forever.”
― Eliza Gaynor Minden

“Real men don't lift weights, they lift women.”
― Every male ballet dancer

“Life can be a wonderful ballet, letting us express all the values we are living for if the sky of our imagination remains open to passion. ("A glimpse of the future")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Let us take care of our Garden of Eden with the fragrance of its flowers and the oxygen of its sheltering trees and savor the fruits of each precious single moment ever since life can be a sparkling ballet expressing the beauties and values that enlighten and enrich us. ( "Why step out of nature?")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“And even this heart of mine has something artificial. The dancers have sewn it into a bag of pink satin, pink satin slightly faded, like their dancing shoes.”
― Edgar Degas

“I feel his arm
Lightly
Over me.
He takes one of my outstretched hands.
Draws it beneath my stomach.

"One more time..."

This is not sex,
Not friendship.
Something
Strange
Special
In the stillness of his breath,
The waterlike way he moves.

He is making a dance.
We are making a dance.”
― Stasia Ward Kehoe, Audition

“True love is like little roses,
sweet, fragrant in small doses.”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, Pierrot & Columbine

“I don’t understand anything about the ballet; all I know is that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses.”
― Anton Chekhov

“But he had never seen Myrna in practice...never that close up. He had been impressed and a little frightened by the contrast between seeing ballet on stange, where everyone seemed to either glide or mince effortlessly on the tips of their pointes. and seeing it from less than five feet away, with harsh daylight pouring in the floor-to-ceiling windows and no music- only the choreographer rythmically clapping his hands and yelling harsh criticisms. No praise, only criticisms. Their faces ran with sweat. Their leotards were wet with sweat. The room, as large and airy as it way, stank of sweat. Sleek muscles trembled and fluttered on the nervous edge of exhaustion. Corded tendons stood out like insulated cables. Throbbing veins popped out on foreheads and necks. Except for the choreographer's clapping and angry, hectoring shouts, the only sounds were the thrup-thud of ballet dancers on pointe moving across the floor and harsh, agonized panting for breath. Jack had suddenly realized that these dancers were not just earning a living, they were killing themselves. Most of all he remembered their expressions- all that exhausted concentration, all that pain... but transcending the pain, or at least creeping around its edges, he had seen joy. Joy was unmistakably what that look was, and it scared Jack because it had seemed inexplicable.”
― Stephen King, The Talisman

“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.”
― Misty Copeland

“Caution not spirit, let it roam wild; for in that natural state dance embraces divine frequency.”
― Shah Asad Rizvi

“Life is an affair of mystery; shared with companions of music, dance and poetry.”
― Shah Asad Rizvi

“It’s a plié. You do it on all the positions. It’s very good for dramatic moments.”
― Anne Ursu, Breadcrumbs

“Through synergy of intellect, artistry and grace came into existence the blessing of a dancer.”
― Shah Asad Rizvi

“Music and Dancing, not only give great pleasure but have the honour of depending on Mathematics, for they consist in number and in measure.....Therefore, whatever the old doctors may say, to employ oneself at all this is to be a Philosopher and a Mathematician.”
― Charles Sorel

“Para bailar, hay que merecerlo. Bailar sobre un escenario y delante de público constituye la mayor de las felicidades. A decir verdad, incluso sin público, incluso sin escenario, bailar es el colmo de la embriaguez. Una alegría tan profunda justifica los sacrificios más crueles. La educación que os damos aquí tiende a presentar la danza como lo que es: no un medio sino una recompensa.”
― Amélie Nothomb, The Book of Proper Names

“Classic Ballet,

Keep away, keep building your creaky fairy castles, keep cloning clones and meaningless manners, hang on to your beanstalk ballerinas and their midget male shadows, run yourself out of business with your tons of froufrou and costly clattery toe shoes that ruin all chances for illusions of lightness, keep on crowding the minds of blind balletomanes who prefer dainty poses to the eloquent strength of momentum, who have forgotten or never known the manings of gesture, who would nod their noses to barefoot embargos ("so grab me" spelt backwards). Continue to repolish your stiff technique and to ignore a public that hungers for something other than a bag of tricks and the empty-headedness of surface patterns.

Just keep it up, keep imitating yourself, and, , go grow your own dance makers. Come on, don't keep trying to filter modern ones through your so-safe extablishment. We're to be seen undiluted, undistorted, not absorbed by your hollow world like blood into a sponge.

Yours truly,
A Different Leaf on Our Family Tree”
― Paul Taylor, Private Domain: An Autobiography

“I'm bored stiff by ballet. i can't bear those muscular white legs like unbaked plaited loaves, and I get quite hysterical every time one of the women sticks out her leg at right angles, and the man suddenly grabs it and walks round in a circle as though he were opening a tin.”
― Jilly Cooper, Jolly Super Too

“A major assumption that underlies this selection is that it is only within work that is progressive, experimental or avant-garde that staid, old-fashioned images and ideas about gender can be challenged and alternatives imagined. I have never seen a ballet performance that has not disappointed me.”
― Ramsay Burt, The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle and Sexuality

“The way he kisses me makes me feel like a delicacy he’s been starved from.”
― Brynn Ford, Pas de Trois

“Dancing came to me naturally. Like eating or sleeping, it felt like second nature. It was simply a part of me. I answered its call because I had no other choice. Ignoring it wasn't an option. The force was too great. I never imagined in those early days that dancing would become my profession. I didn't even know that dancing was a profession. I just knew I had to do it.”
― David Hallberg, A Body of Work: Dancing to the Edge and Back

“Pas de Deux class was like getting your first period: you knew it was coming for years before it arrived; it sounded incredibly unpleasant and impossibly terrifying; and it was entirely necessary... The pas de deux, where the man and the woman dance together, is key to the ballet. To every ballet.”
― Rachel Kapelke-Dale, The Ballerinas

“Sometimes I’d complain about the pain in my feet and he’d say I should quit if it hurt so much. I don’t think he understood that it was all worth it, sore feet and ankles included.”
― Brandy Colbert, Pointe

“I can't wait to see the ballet later,' Rachel giggled. Kirsty put her arm around her best friend and grinned at her. 'Me neither,' she said. 'It's going to be magical!”
― Daisy Meadows, Robyn the Christmas Party Fairy

“Belas sapatilhas de Ballet...
Ah já não posso usar no pé
Leve como um brinquedo,
Logo quando a música toca
É meu calcanhar que choca,
Toda a ponta dos meus dedos...”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, ACross Tic

“On the television screen were ballerinas. A buzzer sounded in George's head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.

"That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did," said Hazel.

"Huh" said George.

"That dance-it was nice," said Hazel.

"Yup," said George.

He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren't really very good-no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Harrison Bergeron

“A Nagyszínház bejárata előtt várakozó hintók egy része, miután felvették az utasaikat, egyesével a Borinszkij-rezidencia felé vették az irányt. Körülbelül húszfogatnyi úriember és hölgy kapott meghívót a mulatságra, melynek vendéglistáján a Hattyúk tava balett-táncosai is szerepeltek.”
― Nermin Bezmen, Kurt Seyt & Shura

“Miután meghiúsult a menekülési terve, Sura egy helyben toporogva bevárta őket. Szejit szavait hallva nagy kő esett le a szívéről. - Kedves Tatjána, hadd mutassam be neked ezt az elragadó kisasszonyt. Alekszandra Julianovna Verjenszkaját. Aztán Sura felé fordulva felsorolta a többiek nevét. - A Nagyszínház egyik legnépszerűbb táncosa, Tatjána Tchoupilkina, és becses cimborám, Dzselil Kamilov.”
― Nermin Bezmen, Kurt Seyt & Shura

“Sura csakhamar beleélte magát az emelvényen kibontakozó tündérmesébe. Egyszeriben ott szállt a felhők közt Odett, a hattyúk királynője az összes álmával és félelmével. Odett helyébe képzelve önmagát átérezte, szinte átélte reménytelen szerelmét.Nem tudott uralkodni a könnyein, melyek már patakokban folytak le az arcán.”
― Nermin Bezmen, Kurt Seyt & Shura