George Balanchine Quotes

Ballet is more than a profession - it is a way of life.

I think that I'm so fortunate to have found classical ballet. It completely changed my life and it shaped the person that I am today, on and off the stage.

Ballet is one form which I really want Indians to practice it.

When I was young, I couldn't think about ballet because I had to focus on my own field. But once you secure your own performance area, you can indulge yourself in different territories. Fashion is one. And ballet is absolutely a fantasy, because it deals with the bodies in a different way.

We were tap-dancers but we put more style into it, more bodywork, instead of just footwork.

I tell you, the arts - and especially ballet - the discipline is extraordinary. I was extremely impressed.

I have a penchant for playing God's clowns. Actually, I played Nijinsky once, and he used to call himself God's clown.

However, the moral center of New York City, I believe, is the New York City Ballet.

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.

Since I was a child I've loved going to the opera, theatre and ballet.

There a lot of other things I love to do. I consider myself as an artist, so I dance, I paint, I sing, so as long as I'm creating, I'm happy.

I loved music and dance, and that was exciting to me.

Growing up, I was a dancer. I wanted to be a choreographer.

The modern world thinks of art as very important: something close to the meaning of life.

I don't know if I would write an opera, maybe because of the words. But yes, I would be really excited to do it. I would certainly write a ballet or... I've done a lot of stage before.

When I was still a student, I came out of a performing arts high school, and the female students who were doing traditional dance and ballet were so beautiful. They were beautiful, starting from their postures.

Theatres, actors, critics and public are interlocked in a machine that creaks but never stops. There is always a new season in hand and we are to busy to ask the only vital question which measures the whole structure. Why theatre at all? What for? Is it an anachronism, a superannuated oddity? Surviving like an old monument or a quaint custom? Why do we applaud and what? Has the stage a real place in our lives? What function can it have? What could it serve? What could it explore? What are its special properties?

Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural equilibrium of the ideal.

The world of dance is a charmed place. Some people like to inhabit it, others to behold it; either way it is rewarding.

I think acting is an important profession, because acting can give you pleasure and can teach you at the same time, and that is a good thing.

The first time I saw Mikhail Baryshnikov it was like he had an anti-gravity machine in his pants. He would jump and stay in the air for 10 minutes.

There was a German philosopher who is very well known, his name was Immanuel Kant, and he said there are two things that don’t have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter. Don’t have to mean anything that is, in order to give us deep pleasure.

I am very obsessed with ballet now because it is a very difficult sport and a beautiful one because it is not about money. It's not like playing football or tennis - dance has no sponsors, it's just for the beauty. Maybe it is the only last pure sport.

The ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for "art" that leaves him unmoved--if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes and such.

I would rather dance as a ballerina, though faultily, than as a flawless clown.