Ballet Quotes - Page 6

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  The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.

  Agnes de Mille

  Dance, Lying, Women

  Agnes De Mille (1980). “America dances”, Macmillan Pub Co

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• I cannot avoid condemning all those who, from self-conceit have the pretension to imitate great artists of the past. If their powers of emotion be weak, their powers of expression will be likewise.

  Jean-Georges Noverre

  Artist, Past, Self

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• The defect in wisdom and taste which exists among the majority of dancers is due to the bad education which they generally receive. They apply themselves only to the material side of their art, they learn to jump more or less high, they strive mechanically to execute a number of steps, and like children, who utter a great many words devoid of sense and relation, they execute many phrases of steps devoid of taste and grace.

  Jean-Georges Noverre

  Art, Children, Numbers

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• It is shameful that dancing should renounce the empire it might assert over the mind and only endeavor to please the sight.

  Jean-Georges Noverre

  Sight, Dancing, Mind

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• If our ballets be feeble, monotonous and dull, if they be devoid of ideas, meaning, expression and character, it is less the fault of the art than that of the artist.

  Jean-Georges Noverre

  Art, Character, Expression

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• Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays.

  George Balanchine

  Dance, Ballet Class, Play

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• Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.

  Martha Graham

  Dance, Passion, Ballet Class

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• If you wanna dance, a windshield wiper'll do it-all you need is a beat.

  Artie Shaw

  Needs, Beats, Ifs

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• Classical ballet will never die.

  Ninette de Valois

  Dance, Art, Classic

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• Ballet is completely unnatural to the body, just being turned out... it's not the way your body is supposed to function, so you actually [...] train your body to be a different structure than you were born with.

  Neve Campbell

  Different, Body, Way

  Interview with Steve Head, www.ign.com. January 5, 2004.

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• People who leave Washington do so by way of the box... ballet or coffin.

  Clay Pell

  People, Politics, Way

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• I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.

  Mikhail Baryshnikov

  Inspiring, Dance, Sports

  "Dance Like There’s Nobody Watching" by Siobhan Kukolic, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 19, 2016.

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• The defects born of habit are innumerable. I see every child occupied in some way in disarranging and disfiguring his physique; some displace the ankles through the habit they have contracted of standing on one leg only and playing, as it were, with the other; placing it in a position which though disagreeable and strained, does not fatigue them, because the softness of their tendons and muscles lend themselves to all kinds of movement.

  Jean-Georges Noverre

  Children, Way, Doe

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• Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Dance, Ballet Class, Dancing

  Charles Baudelaire, Rosemary Lloyd (1991). “The prose poems and La Fanfarlo”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Come knit hands, and beat the ground in a light fantastic round

  John Milton

  Light, Hands, Fantastic

  Comus l. 143 (1637)

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• When I was a little kid, I took tap and ballet. I've always loved to dance. I'm a rhythm machine.

  Tommy Lee

  Music, Dance, Kids

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• I started taking ballet lessons when I was 4, and I was performing in ballet companies when I was 10, and I did summer stock in Miami Beach when I was 12, and finally I said, 'I gotta go to Broadway.'

  Rita Rudner

  Summer, Beach, Lessons

  "Lovely Rita: Comedian Rita Rudner Revels in Writing Career". lasvegassun.com. January 25, 2002.

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• 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.

  Lord Byron

  Angel, Nymphs, Gentleman

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• I wanted to give people - which is fairly bizarre considering my whole life is contemporary dance really - I wanted to give people a really fulfilling sense that they had seen a white classical ballet - in a very pure form.

  Graeme Murphy

  White, People, Giving

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

  Jean-Georges Noverre

  Careers, People, Training

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• Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.

  Martha Graham

  Leadership, Being Strong, Work

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• I'm enamored with the art world. Anytime you look at anything that's considered artistic, there's a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can't exist without it.

  Steve Martin

  Art, Looks, World

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• Some people think that movements, such as the movements in ballet, are a higher cultural expression, whereas some are just dirt. I think it is elitist to think that a trained movement is more acceptable than untrained and possibly unrehearsed movements.

  Yoko Ono

  Thinking, Expression, People

  "Walking on Thin Ice: A Career-Spanning Conversation With Yoko Ono". Interview with Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, www.spin.com. November 06, 2013.

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• It is not a question of skimming the surface of the art, it must be probed to its depths, for to seize upon superficial things only is to degenerate into mediocrity and obscurity.

  Jean-Georges Noverre

  Art, Superficial Things, Depth

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• Ballet is only good when it is great.

  Arlene Croce

  Dance, Ballet Dance, Ballet Dancer

  Arlene Croce (1977). “Afterimages”, Random House Inc

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