When I was young I was soft spoken and a little bit timid and passive. My dream then was to be a ballerina or a figure skater - something very delicate.

With 'Black Swan,' the ballerina saga flips its tiara and goes on a hallucinatory bender, a scary acid trip where transfiguration and disfiguration meet.

My grandma was actually a pretty well-known opera singer in Cuba, and then my mom was a ballerina. Two of my three sisters are dancers, so we grew up in the arts.

I was talking in an interview about how I would love to have a ballerina flat for men. Repetto heard about it and decided to create one. It's almost like a slipper.

I used to want to be a war photographer, and I used to want to be a ballerina and a comedian. I used to want to be a writer. I invalidated myself; it's a mistake for me.

If my mother was taking pictures, I never wanted her to take the camera off me, ever. When I look at my videos from when I was even just two, I would be playing ballerina.

I really enjoyed watching a ballerina named Denise Dabrowski who used to dance at California Ballet. She was a beautiful ballerina and role model for a lot of young dancers.

I have too much respect for ballet to dare practice it. I did ask ballerina Megan LeCrone to teach me jetés. She said that was impossible but did observe that I have great feet.

From the age of three to 15, I wanted to be a ballerina and trained really, really hard. Then I had that classic movie story moment, where I had an injury and had to give up my dream.

I loved shoes. I had my little ballerina flats, and my mom never wore heels. But when I was about three or four, she got a job where she had to wear the tiniest heels. I was obsessed.

I've always thought of modeling as a performance, so I don't mind kind of pretending. I kind of pretend in a lot of my poses that I am a ballerina or a hip-hop dancer or a grunge performer.

I was a professional ballerina. After becoming an actress, I did a lot of theater, which included musical theater. The first musical play I did was Murray Schisgal's 'The Pushcart Peddlers.'

Looking back at it now, I really feel like it was a gift because I don't know if I have the talent to become a prima ballerina. It's such a hard job to have. I don't have any regrets about it.

Kids are always told that they can be anything that they want. But what if you want to be a ballerina, and you're terrible at ballet? Or what if you're gifted at ballet, but you don't like doing it?

People say that wrestling is not ballet. But as a former ballerina, I'd like to see some of these men put on a pair of tights and go do what a dancer does. Because it's a lot! It's definitely difficult.

How awfully convenient for you, regardless. And for him. He won't have to worry about you spilling his secrets." "Yeah," Jace said. "He's terrified I'll tell everyone that he's always wanted to be a ballerina.

To become a classical ballerina, you have to move to New York when you're 12 or 11 and that becomes your life. I just wanted to be good in my company in Charleston and I wanted it to always be part of my life.

An ex-ABT ballerina, while staging a ballet for the company, once followed a dancer into the bathroom to deliver notes through the stall door. She was known to bark - literally, like a dog - during private rehearsals.

My fashion icons are Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner. Their classic looks and clean lines should be the cornerstones of your wardrobe - white cotton shirts, black Capri pants, pencil skirts and ballerina skirts.

In theatre or in ballet, the ballerina always passes on what they know. It's a hands-on craft. You can't really learn the soul and the pathos of it if you just see a video. It has to be taught by someone who is in the know.

My parents are from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and I feel like it's an old Southern thing where people say that, as a kid, you can be an astronaut or a ballerina or a singer, but as a grown person, you need to go and get a job.

When I was growing up, I dreamed about becoming a cowgirl, a detective, a spy, a great actress, or a ballerina. Not a dentist, like my father, or a homemaker, like my mother - and certainly not a writer, although I always loved to read.

When Disney was creating Elsa, they based a lot of her movements on that of a ballerina, which was interesting for me to find out because I actually did ballet years ago. That definitely informed some of the ways I made her walk and move.

I was born into a family of gospel singers. My early ambitions were many. I was going to be a ballerina. I almost had that one come true until I tore a tendon, so I transferred from my toes to my throat and that's where the talent settled.

Girls are supposed to sing. It's the guys' thing to play the guitar. Crossing the line is kind of like trying to be a male ballerina. But if you work long and hard enough, are really passionate about it, people will finally shut up and listen.

My mom is actually a former prima ballerina, and all the women in my family are associated either with dance or choreography or acting, so I'm very lucky in a way because I grew up in a family of artists. I've been dancing since I was a little kid.

I was trained by Method acting teachers and we were taught that aside from whatever gift you may or may not have or the level of that gift, that you were obliged to know how to build a table. It's a craft. It's like being a ballerina or a violinist.

I thought that the 40s was a tough decade, because it's when you finally figure out that you're not immortal, when you really start seeing that certain options are closed to you forever: You're not going to be a brain surgeon; you're not going to be a ballerina.

When I first went on Strictly' I had a little phase at the beginning, you know, when I was sat next to this really beautiful lady, Darcey Bussell - this ballerina, this Snow White beauty - that I stopped eating until I looked at myself and realized I looked so gaunt.

I am just so thankful that my mom was a fantastic mom. She wasn't a stage mother; she didn't push me. She was happy if I was happy. We are so different. I was very shy; my mom did all the talking. She was my strength. She never expected that I would be this ballerina.

If the height of the heel is the same as the length of your foot, it starts to look wrong. And if the heel is positioned badly on the sole, you get into ballerina territory, where the body is pushed into a very strange posture. You can exaggerate the arch only so much.

Me in high school, I was kind of a loner. I had a handful of friends. I'd eat my lunch in my car every day in my senior year. I went to ballet. I was a ballerina, so I was very focused on that. You kind of have to be. That was two-thirds of my week, going to ballet class.

I push myself hard. I don't like pain, exactly, but as a ballerina, I lived in constant pain. At ballet school in Stockholm, I remember we had a locker where if someone had been to the doctor and gotten painkillers, we divided them among us. In a sense, we were all addicted.

I watched a lot of soap operas like 'General Hospital' and 'Days Of Our Lives.' When it came to movies, my parents were quite strict. They would watch 'Flash Dance' but wouldn't let us see the whole film because Jennifer Beals' character was a stripper. It was so funny when I finally saw the whole film. I thought she was a ballerina!

Being a ballerina, you don't ever want to show yourself less than perfect, ever. That's what your goal is: 24/7 perfection.

Before founding Ballet Beautiful, I was a ballerina with the New York City Ballet.

Perseverance has always just been something that was in me. And it was a tool that came in very handy as a ballerina.

What really matters is that 'Black Swan' deploys and exaggerates all the cliches of earlier ballet movies, especially 'The Red Shoes,' another tale of a ballerina driven mad and suicidal.

I know some people aspire to a ballerina's body, but I looked forward to feeling more feminine.

I had never a thought of training to be a ballerina. I was a normal child. I never dreamed of the tutu.

American Ballet Theatre's rehearsal studios are at 890 Broadway, an old building where exposed pipes clank and hiss in uneven accompaniment to piano music. The high ceilings wear a toupee of dust. The wall paint peels like a newbie ballerina's toes.

I remember my dreams when I was a junior soloist. 'Oh, I hope I don't end here,' I thought. 'I want to do the ballerina in 'Scotch Symphony.' I don't want to be the little Scotch girl.' And I actually went beyond my wildest dreams. I worked with Balanchine. I had ballets choreographed for me.

I always looked at the process and the career of being a ballerina as sacred. It's a true gift to have this talent and perform these masterworks; it's sublime.

Stretching before and after every workout keeps muscles supple and helps elongate the lines of a ballerina's limbs.

I think that the ideal physique and look of a ballerina is always changing with different eras. And it's continuing to change.

The first time the Kirov ballet was seen in America was on Sept. 11, 1961. The ballet was 'Swan Lake.' The ballerina was Inna Zubkovskaya. The place was the old Met, on what must have been one of the hottest nights of the year, and there was no air-conditioning.

When I started, there was a very strong image of what the ballerina was supposed to be in her tights and her costume, and then I started doing photo shoots in bomber boots, and it wasn't seen as the done thing.

My daughter arrived when I was five months pregnant with my son. We adopted Melanie from Korea; she was 2 years old, almost 3. I always wanted to have a family. I had a good example because Melissa Hayden was a ballerina in our company, and she had two children and danced afterward, and Allegra Kent also did.

A simple scoop-neck leotard highlights a ballerina's swanlike neck and elegant posture, both rooted in a powerful core.

I don't want to be anything else other than a ballerina. I love what I do outside of my work, but at the end of the day, I have to sacrifice.

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