Ballet Quotes

Enjoy these quotes about the beauty and challenge of ballet!

”Ballet technique is arbitrary and very difficult.

It never becomes easy... it becomes possible.”

- Agnes de Mille

 “Ballet is a dance executed by the human soul.”
 

- Alexander Pushkin

“Ballet is the one form of theater

where nobody speaks a foolish word all evening

nobody on the stage at least.”

- Edwin Denby

”You don't have to know about ballet to enjoy it,

all you have to do is look at it.”

- Edwin Denby

”Most people think of ballet as children in little tutus.

They don't know it is sweat, blood and tears as well!”

- Nan Keating

”Ballet class is like Life Lessons 101.

You learn some of life's most important lessons here

that you will carry with you forever.”

- Joanne H. Morscher

”Letting go of perfectionism,

so ingrained in the nature of a ballet dancer,

can be the most difficult thing.”

- Author Unknown

“There are two basic elements to classical ballet.

They are quality and quantity.

Quantity is how much a dancer can physically do…

the element that gives an artist the freedom

to concentrate on quality,

while quality is how he or she does it…quality of movement…

the most difficult phase… requires long and arduous training.”

 
- Igor Schwezoff

“The vocabulary and manner of classical ballet

express a high order of discipline and restraint,

a sense of harmony with forces larger and more lasting

than the individual.”

- Marsha B. Siegel

“A lot of people insisted on a wall between

modern dance and ballet.

I'm beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.”

- Twyla Tharp

“What's so wonderful about ballet

 is that it's mind-driven physicality.

It's almost a Greek ideal of body, mind, and form.”
 

- Edward Villella

“Ballet discipline:

only the true believer would suffer the rigors it demanded.”

-Author Unknown

“Common sense would tell parents

never to send their children to a ballet school.

Common sense would tell teenagers

that there is a wider and happier world

beyond the grueling strictures of daily barre and class.

Common sense would tell the graduating student

that there are infinitely superior ways of making money

than joining a professional ballet company.

Common sense would tell a young dancer

that very few (laughably few) of his or her colleagues

will ever make it to the top or even near the top.

Yet... there remains the dance and the dancer.”

- Author Unknown

“If it were not for dreams

there would not be such a thing as ballet,

the cruelest of the performing arts.”

- Author Unknown

“Everything is beautiful at the ballet... “

- from “A Chorus Line”

“Anyone who has a child today should train him

to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he'll escape.”

- W. H. Auden

“Ballet is not technique

but a way of expression that comes more closely

to the inner language of man than any other.”

- George Borodin

“Ballet is only good when it is great.”

- Arlene Croce

“Classical ballet is so unforgiving.” 

- Francis Patrellel