Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Choreography is mentally draining, but there's a pleasure in getting into the studio with the dancers and the music.
It's time for there to be roles in the ballet where two men can fall in love, and a woman can lead a company of 20 dancers that include both men and women.
The universe lies before you on the floor, in the air, in the mysterious bodies of your dancers, in your mind. From this voyage no one returns poor or weary.
Professional dancers are known for their barely-there costumes.
I look at the dancers and I get the inspiration for the work from them.
Like most dancers, I love lip stains! We hate gloss because hair gets stuck in it.
At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.
Dancers are trained to be disciplined to do what they are told, but I knew that time goes by, and I didn't want to make the mistakes of the others.
I'm very smart when it comes to choosing dancers and trying to show the world that there's a whole lot of dancing going on.
I like to be around dancers who are totally committed to the art form, totally committed to the men and women around them.
They improve greatly, and sometimes I go and see the performances they do and I am consciously aware that there isn't enough work for the good dancers.
Ballet needs figures that people can recognize and relate to. People don't know ballet dancers as well as they know other artists.
Chorus Line' opened things up a bit. Any show that's successful does that. But 'Chorus Line' was about dancers.
I always recommend a sensible diet, including lots of carbohydrates and avoiding too much fat. Dancers don't need different fuel from other people - they just need more of it because they use more energy.
The Kirov is a great ballet company because it has so many terrific dancers, but it doesn't always know what to do with them.
Dancers are working their bodies just like a marathon runner would, and you have to eat to make it through a three-hour performance. Dancers put their bodies through incredible strain.
I had daydreamed through many performances of Swan Lake, thinking the dancing tutus only ever conveyed one aspect of swans: their beauty gliding on water. I wondered what it would be like to use male dancers and bring out swans' aggressive, muscular side.
The highest heels I do are six-inch heels - but mostly only dancers can wear them, since they are used to being on point in ballet shoes. Their feet are arched.
My dad was very religious growing up and a little bit closed minded, and I think me being in the theater, two of my three sisters are dancers, so being in the arts world has changed and opened him up in a lot of ways.
In the UK and the US especially you've got a lot of throwaway artists who have their 40 million dancers and they do their show. There's many artists who would not do a live show because they know they can't.
I was seventeen when I moved to New York. I was nineteen when I joined the main company. I was going through a lot. Just becoming an adult and just wanting to fit in, be accepted, and be in common with the other dancers.
I was a dancer from a young age. My parents were dancers; we were taken to a lot of ballet as children. It occurred to me that what I liked more than dancing the steps was acting the story of whatever particular performance I was taking part in.
It doesn't bother me or Curtis being questioned about our sexuality and it probably happens more because we're dancers. That stereotype is disappearing, but people always made ignorant, short-sighted comments when we were growing up.
I think reality TV for dancers has changed for the better. There are more opportunities and the platforms that we are being given are better. We have more job security and TV is allowing different levels of dance to come through to the forefront. People can now take their abilities and turn them into brands and make these top dollars.
I grew up in Arizona, but I moved to L.A. when I was 18 to model. I was doing work for American Apparel and then got cast in the Yeezus tour. Vanessa Beecroft did the creative direction, and they hired three American Apparel models and nine dancers - it wasn't a lot of dancing; we were mostly just walking.
We put too much on contemporary dancers. A lot of them cannot change styles; a lot of them can't do anything else other than run around the stage reaching and stretching in anguish to somebody off camera that I never understand who it is. But it's the teenage angst they have to live with.
I think it would be fair to say that most female dancers have dealt with, whether it's an extreme, or minor complex in eating disorders. So the first thing I would say to girls who are feeling that way is you're not alone. You're far from alone. You're the majority. There's absolutely nothing wrong with what you're feeling.
Mr. Balanchine was a great gentleman, and he loved his dancers. He was devoted to his company. He came to the ballet every night, and his presence was felt. It was like the whole company was dancing for him. And if he liked you, he trusted you to be yourself. He didn't try to change you and make you into something you were not.
Dancers are stripped enough onstage. You don't have to know more about them than they've given you already.
My dancers expect me to deliver because my choreography represents their livelihood.
I feel an obligation to use black dancers because there must be more opportunities for them, but not because I'm a black choreographer talking to black people.
It's expensive to get studio space and dancers. My whole first three years, I was sneaking around in the studios and getting kicked out of them. It was kind of depressing.
I've had a lot of little girls write to me saying that they want to be dancers and that I've inspired them.
There were ten dancers - four guys and six girls - including me, on the Beyonce tour. Sometimes we would go out with her, to events. She was really normal - just like everybody else!
Dancers, you know, they have pain everywhere: ankles in the morning, or back or neck or ribs or knees or the muscles. You are never free of pain, you know.
Dancers use their bodies in extraordinary ways, so we are chronically pre-arthritic, because of how we use our muscles and our bones.
I was always looking at footage of dancers from Nicholas Brothers to Ralph Brown to Sand Man to Miller Brothers and Lois, and I grew up looking at old footage.
Well, it's not full time - my dancers are only paid for six months of the year in two three-month blocks; but yes, it is possible we could do it in another year.
I love the dancers in the Bolshoi, but all of my Moscow friends are outside the company. A friend introduced me to Vika Gazinskaya, a well-known Russian designer. I met her group. The rest is history.
I would not correct dancers if I was performing, because I don't believe in performers correcting other performers.
Young dancers are training at a very vulnerable time in their lives, through adolescence, and while they are trying to work out who they are as people, never mind as a dancer. So train the whole person, not just the dancer.
You can usually tell how healthy a ballet company is by the degree of your interest in the middle ranks of the dancers - the not-yet stars, the up-and-comers.
Ballet is a healthy world despite what people might think. There's a perception that ballet dancers are skinny and unhealthy, but that's rubbish. You have to be strong, so eating regularly and healthily is essential.
It's going to take a while before we see a real shift in the students and the dancers that are going into professional companies because it takes so many years of training, but I do think that there's a new crop of dancers, of minority dancers that are entering into the ballet world.
So many people report to be contemporary dancers, and they're not. They are sort of jazz dancers that feel like they're throwing a bit of classical in there. I mean, a true contemporary dancer has got ballet as their base and classical ballet, and that is their base. And then they choose to extemporize on that and go into a contemporary world.
You see, dancers are quite mature people because they start performing so early. They become professionals when they start to take everyday classes.
Modern dancers should be doing things no one else is doing, and it should come from the gut.
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.
Dancers are not like movie actresses. People look at our bodies, not our faces. They only recognise me when I sign my name on something and they say, 'Ah yes, Sylvie.'
As long as there are dancers around who love to dance, there will be an Alvin Ailey American Dance Company. We miss him so much, but he's alive as soon as you see a dancer hit the stage.