Gelsey Kirkland Quotes

Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men.

People come to see beauty, and I dance to give it to them.

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.

I love to play a character. If I'm playing Cinderella or Aurora in 'Sleeping Beauty' or something like that, then I enjoy classical a lot. But to do just a two-minute solo, purely to show classical aesthetic, is not my favorite thing to do.

If 'ecstasy' means to stand outside ourselves, then what better ambition can there be as we wait in the wings of the Royal Albert Hall: to leave self-obsession behind and take the audience on a journey across the high wire of Beethoven or the flying trapeze of Liszt.

The great thing about acting is you don't have to worry about yourself at all. I tend to just get out of the way of me and let something come through.

The dance is the highest symbol of life itself.

It is the function of art to carry us beyond speech to experience.

The artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition-and therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty and pain.

As much as the world has an instinct for evil and is a breeding ground for genocide, holocaust, slavery, racism, war, oppression, and injustice, the world has an even greateer instinct for goodness, rebirth, mercy, beauty, truth, freedom and love.

Life is not logic, life is not philosophy. Life is a dance, a song, a celebration! It is more like love and less like logic.

I'm just always making things that are personal but hopefully also inspiring, and share not just my story, but other people's stories.

Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe.

But I'm not here just to make records and money. I'm here to say something and to touch other people, sometimes in a cry of desperation: "Do you know this feeling?

If all of the steps of surrender are present, then a great Rembrandt or Monet will evoke love because the artist is simply there in all his naked humanity.

Surely the hold of great music on the listener is precisely this: that the listener is made whole; and at the same time part of an image of infinite grace and grandeur which is creation.

You dance love, and you dance joy, and you dance dreams.

Music and love are the only accomplishments of humanity which do not, in an absolute sense, have to be called attempts with unsuitable means.

They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely it was, they studied your scars and tribulations.

Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself.

I regard singing pretty much like acting. Each song is like playing a different role. I get very involved with my material. I feel a responsibility for the emotion it brings out in the listener.

Every time I dance I have a high. I mean every time I danced, it was the whole world was the stage and I was in control of it and there was a form and a ritual and yet it was spontaneous and life didn't matter after that of before

It is the search for beauty...That is what it is. We find ourselves on this earth--gods and men--and we know that it is beautiful. That is one of the few things we understand--beauty; because it is there, in the world, and we can see it all about us. We want beauty. It requires our love. It just does.

One of the most beautiful sights in dance is American Ballet Theatre in full flight.

Nothing regarding man is ever inhuman. That's why I make films, not iceboxes.