Ballet Quotes

“Dancing is creating a sculpture that is visible only for a moment.”
― Erol Ozan

“Life can be a wonderful ballet, letting us express all the values we are living for if the sky of our imagination remains open to passion. ("A glimpse of the future")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Let us take care of our Garden of Eden with the fragrance of its flowers and the oxygen of its sheltering trees and savor the fruits of each precious single moment ever since life can be a sparkling ballet expressing the beauties and values that enlighten and enrich us. ( "Why step out of nature?")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“And even this heart of mine has something artificial. The dancers have sewn it into a bag of pink satin, pink satin slightly faded, like their dancing shoes.”
― Edgar Degas

“True love is like little roses,
sweet, fragrant in small doses.”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, Pierrot & Columbine

“I feel his arm
Lightly
Over me.
He takes one of my outstretched hands.
Draws it beneath my stomach.

"One more time..."

This is not sex,
Not friendship.
Something
Strange
Special
In the stillness of his breath,
The waterlike way he moves.

He is making a dance.
We are making a dance.”
― Stasia Ward Kehoe, Audition

“I knew that I just didn't have it in me to give up, even if I sometimes felt like a fool for continuing to believe.”
― Misty Copeland

“Caution not spirit, let it roam wild; for in that natural state dance embraces divine frequency.”
― Shah Asad Rizvi

“Life is an affair of mystery; shared with companions of music, dance and poetry.”
― Shah Asad Rizvi

“Through synergy of intellect, artistry and grace came into existence the blessing of a dancer.”
― Shah Asad Rizvi

“Music and Dancing, not only give great pleasure but have the honour of depending on Mathematics, for they consist in number and in measure.....Therefore, whatever the old doctors may say, to employ oneself at all this is to be a Philosopher and a Mathematician.”
― Charles Sorel

“Para bailar, hay que merecerlo. Bailar sobre un escenario y delante de público constituye la mayor de las felicidades. A decir verdad, incluso sin público, incluso sin escenario, bailar es el colmo de la embriaguez. Una alegría tan profunda justifica los sacrificios más crueles. La educación que os damos aquí tiende a presentar la danza como lo que es: no un medio sino una recompensa.”
― Amélie Nothomb, The Book of Proper Names

“I'm bored stiff by ballet. i can't bear those muscular white legs like unbaked plaited loaves, and I get quite hysterical every time one of the women sticks out her leg at right angles, and the man suddenly grabs it and walks round in a circle as though he were opening a tin.”
― Jilly Cooper, Jolly Super Too

“Classic Ballet,

Keep away, keep building your creaky fairy castles, keep cloning clones and meaningless manners, hang on to your beanstalk ballerinas and their midget male shadows, run yourself out of business with your tons of froufrou and costly clattery toe shoes that ruin all chances for illusions of lightness, keep on crowding the minds of blind balletomanes who prefer dainty poses to the eloquent strength of momentum, who have forgotten or never known the manings of gesture, who would nod their noses to barefoot embargos ("so grab me" spelt backwards). Continue to repolish your stiff technique and to ignore a public that hungers for something other than a bag of tricks and the empty-headedness of surface patterns.

Just keep it up, keep imitating yourself, and, , go grow your own dance makers. Come on, don't keep trying to filter modern ones through your so-safe extablishment. We're to be seen undiluted, undistorted, not absorbed by your hollow world like blood into a sponge.

Yours truly,
A Different Leaf on Our Family Tree”
― Paul Taylor, Private Domain: An Autobiography

“A major assumption that underlies this selection is that it is only within work that is progressive, experimental or avant-garde that staid, old-fashioned images and ideas about gender can be challenged and alternatives imagined. I have never seen a ballet performance that has not disappointed me.”
― Ramsay Burt, The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle and Sexuality

“Le ballet est un rêve de poète pris au sérieux.”
― Théophile Gautier

“I thought that this mad life you all live, always on the edge of pain and exhaustion, was somehow worth it. It was glamorous, beautiful, justified by art.”
― Lucy Ashe, The Dance of the Dolls

“Without pain, how do we know we are working hard enough? I said that to Clara once and she laughed at me. She didn’t understand what I meant.”
― Lucy Ashe, The Dance of the Dolls

“Well, with every pirouette, we entrust the weight of our bodies on the tips of our toes, with the promise of them delivering us in cyclones. Our arms, always elegant it may appear, struggle beneath the heaviness our muscles battle to stay fluid. It looks effortless--- every allongé, every piqué as simple as the natural flow of water. But every dance, every move our bodies make, is a war against itself. It's magnificently dangerous. Like... blooming into an ocean. That's what it feels like. An ocean. Deep and rich all-encompassing, drowning out everyone in our presence. They sink into the moment, succumb to every movement, and simply just admire.”
― Kiana Krystle, Dance of the Starlit Sea

“I wanted to be recognized in the stories I loved so badly. With ballet, it doesn't matter where you come from. It matters how good you are."
"That's why you trained so hard."
"Yes, but it wasn't just that." Before things were bad, my mother used to ask why I was so drawn to the sea. I told her that although the sea is dangerous beneath the surface, people still find beauty in it from above. It's still something to be adored, even if it is usually only ever loved at a distance. That's why I loved performing. For a moment, I could just be admired. Not a danger to everyone around me.
Like the sea, I have a tendency to destroy things. Beautiful things. Sacred things. The sea takes things she loves--- like coral or shells--- and obliterates them to sand. I've always told myself she doesn't mean to; it's just the way she is. She can't choose when the hurricanes roll in or when the tsunamis rise. They flow out of her as they should. Maybe even in ways she doesn't understand.
Ballet makes me feel like the ocean--- silently unfurling with all the rage I've buried deep down, yet still manifesting in something beautiful. For those few moments, with all eyes on me, I'm heard. Ballet tells stories, and this is how I tell mine.”
― Kiana Krystle, Dance of the Starlit Sea

“He imagines dancing with her, the two of them arm in arm under the stars. Silent, of course, but that is no matter. It is better that way. She is a dancing doll, his Coppélia, created at last.”
― Lucy Ashe, The Dance of the Dolls

“Clearly it is simplest never to marry at all,’ I said, trying to keep my voice light. These stories, ridiculous fairy tales though they were, had tainted the evening. Like Vivian, I preferred to think of The Sleeping Princess as a magical spectacle of fairy godmothers and characters from folklore. But then we had both learned the hard way about heartbreak and loss.”
― Lucy Ashe, The Sleeping Beauties

“The thing is, ballet is a collaborative experience. Each dancer sets the scene for the next one. Even when you’re doing a solo, it’s not just about you: you are simply borrowing everyone’s attention for a few minutes, before passing it on. Ballet is about harmony. And harmony can only be achieved in the spirit of teamwork.”
― Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau, Kisses and Croissants

“We break off into the streets, repairing the cobblestones with our brisk allegro. The townsfolk step aside in awe as my allongés stitch the pastel wood back into cottages and storefronts. Flowers grow from my quick bourrée steps, breathing life back into Luna Island in shades of pink and purple. Rainbows rise from the sea with my grand jeté, summoning the dolphins to leap alongside our dance. Damien catches me in his arms before lifting me into the air as I paint the sky bright blue.
We laugh as the beauty of Luna Island blooms once again, running into the forest and turning the ash into lush green trees. Color bursts in the darkness as we chassé through the angels' village and past the glade where our story first began. With my pirouettes, I add extra pink petals to the garden where Damien and I once lay.
I break into a series of chaîné turns as we make our way back down to the beach, unleashing the magic Luna bestowed upon me. The townsfolk watch in awe in the midst of the commotion, and I dust them in a veil of starlight that follows my path, healing bruises and stitching wounds until no one bleeds. They gather around me as I finish my dance, thrumming with applause and tossing the freshly spun flowers at my feet.”
― Kiana Krystle, Dance of the Starlit Sea

“We must approach exercises as we approach the treatment of an illness. We get orders from a doctor, but the individual knows best how the orders should be carried out.

Basic Principles of Classical Ballet: Russian Ballet Technique (p. 33). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.”
― Vaganova, Agrippina

“When I ache, when I'm tired or just lonely living in the town on my own, I know I have to keep on going. I walk into my theater and see my stage which still calls out to me and pleads with me, "Use me. Create for me." It's there ready to offer itself for more creatively [sic]. It is up to me to use it again. My theater says to me, "Take me. Do something with me. I'm ready for the challenge. Give me something to live for; something to look forward to.”
― Marta Becket, To Dance on Sands: The Life And Art of Death Valley's Marta Becket

“They would enchant him with their music, their wordless beauty, and then they would dance him to death, carrying his body with them into another realm when the first sunlight broke through the canopy of leaves”
― Celine Saintclare, The Feminine Art of Revenge

“The boldest little girl places her fists on her hips and sneers up at me. "You're too big to be a ballerina."
My arms cross over my chest. "Yeah? Well you're too small to ride the really fun roller coasters."
She sticks her tongue out at me.
I stick mine out right back.”
― Carli J. Corson, It's a Love/Skate Relationship

“I have locked my heart away in a pink satin slipper.”
― Edgar Degas

“Tchaikovsky would grate into music, leak out like an ointment from the long day’s captivity. At night neighbors heard the grating nonstop ballet inveigle into dance these three tenants; either they moved to Russian music or they sat before each other, numbed and apologetic.”
― Wilfrido D. Nolledo, But for the Lovers