Ninette de Valois Quotes

• Classical ballet will never die.

  Ninette de Valois

  Dance, Art, Ballet

  73 Copy quote

• You cannot create genius. All you can do is nurture it.

  Ninette de Valois

  Education, Creating, Ballet

  33 Copy quote

• Hardly any generation wants to take the whole of the last generation, it just wants to take its best bits.

  Ninette de Valois

  Generations, Want, Lasts

  23 Copy quote

• The smile is the dance of the face - the dance is the smile of the limbs.

  Ninette de Valois

  Dance, Dancing, Faces

  11 Copy quote

• First of all, the most important, that is to learn everything good that has survived from other times, and carefully to watch the bad - and throw it out.

  Ninette de Valois

  Dance, Learning, Past

  20 Copy quote

• Somebody must always be doing something new, or life would get very dull.

  Ninette de Valois

  Dull, Something New

  18 Copy quote

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

  Ninette de Valois

  Art, School, Ballet

  17 Copy quote

• You never advance without losing something en passant... you lose it because you're paying so much attention to the new thing.

  Ninette de Valois

  Dance, Ballet, Progress

  19 Copy quote

• Nothing is done easily, first have the thing, then the thing has a success, then all sorts of difficulties arise through the success.

  Ninette de Valois

  Dance, Done, Firsts

  15 Copy quote

• We are developing the other parts, and we can't give quite all our attention to the upper part, but soon the lower parts will be developed, and the upper part and the lower part will become partners, that will be wonderful.

  Ninette de Valois

  Dance, Giving, Attention

  9 Copy quote

• No no, we ALL teach each other, whether it's dancing, whether it's singing, whether it's talking, we all listen to each other. That's progress.

  Ninette de Valois

  Talking, Dancing, Singing

  7 Copy quote

• It's either not good enough and dies altogether, or it develops.

  Ninette de Valois

  Not Good Enough, Good Enough, Enough

  7 Copy quote

• You can't dance until you've learnt steps, the things your feet can do.

  Ninette de Valois

  Dance, Feet, Steps

  8 Copy quote

• The best way to study is to go to the Cecchetti method for about a year and draw onto all the highest points and then put that into the general method.

  Ninette de Valois

  Years, Way, Study

  9 Copy quote

• It is a fact that all the ballet's fundamental dance steps are derived from the folk dances of Western Europe.

  Ninette de Valois

  Dance, Europe, Fundamentals

  "Ninette de Valois: An Idealist Without Illusions".

  4 Copy quote

• You can't stop what comes into a country, you can be influenced, but you can't stop it, you shouldn't, because it makes all the others interesting, we all get muddled up together, and produce something that belongs to everyone.

  Ninette de Valois

  Country, Interesting, Together

  4 Copy quote

• All the children in the school should learn the steps of everything, before they learn the thing, then they know which step they're doing better, because your voice is in certain steps and has to do most of the things that have been composed in those steps.

  Ninette de Valois

  Children, School, Voice

  4 Copy quote

• And then you have the classical ballerinas, they're like sopranos. Applied to the dance.

  Ninette de Valois

  Sopranos, Ballerina

  21 Copy quote

• Nearly everything in life goes in threes and fours.

  Ninette de Valois

  Fours

  7 Copy quote

• God gave us all exactly the same fingers, arms, legs, and feet, but in our different countries we divided them all a little differently as we feel it, do you understand?

  Ninette de Valois

  Country, Gnarly, Feet

  53 Copy quote

• There would never have been a British Ballet without Diaghilev. He had a wonderful influence

  Ninette de Valois

  Ballet, Influence, Wonderful

  7 Copy quote

• Also, if you have an accident, you can't start to dance again at the top, you're too weak; you start with the easy things - the way you did them when you were young, and come up up up, the way you did then.

  Ninette de Valois

  Way, Easy, Weak

  4 Copy quote

• There's nothing in the world that isn't good, bad, and indifferent.

  Ninette de Valois

  World, Indifferent

  4 Copy quote

• Diaghilev was the first to notice good character dancers and that sort of thing.

  Ninette de Valois

  Dance, Character, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

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