Zoe Saldana Quotes

Every girl - and boy, if you so choose - should take some ballet. Because ballet gives you grace. It gives you [the ability] to work with your hands. It's all about your hands.

But you do have to start young as a dancer if you're going to achieve the physical skills necessary.

I took several years of dance lessons that included ballet, tap and jazz. They helped a great deal with body control, balance, a sense of rhythm, and timing.

I wasn't a dancer learning to play Baby Houseman. I was Baby Houseman learning to play a dancer. I was someone who'd never done any Latin dance. I'd taken jazz classes and ballet growing up in New York, so I had dance in me, and I knew I loved it, but I'd never done a dance audition.

I've found that most people who studied when they were little, even if they never took another tap class, it's percussive, so it stays in your body, the muscle memory of it.

Yeah I had the poof thing before the acting because I did ballet.

My years of ballet and jazz dance lessons didn't make me any more graceful - they just helped keep me from bumping into the furniture on stage.

I am a professional dancer, so picking up dance steps was like brushing my teeth.

Professional dancers are known for their barely-there costumes.

I had trained a bit in Bharatanatyam in the past but did not learn in depth. The same goes with jazz, western, and cinematic dance, as I was quite laid back with the training.

I was also just strong and quick - it wasn't hard for me to learn how to dance. I was a natural at it.

I'm not going to say it's easy, but I do have an ease with picking up fight choreography because of my dance training.

I got the part [in Into the Forest], I started taking ballet again to try to regain my strength back. I actually love that it was changed to Crystal Pite's modern dance. And I wouldn't even really call it modern dance because it feels like it's in its own genre.

Ballet has really helped me in every acting role. You have to be very disciplined, you have to be able to control your nerves and perform under pressure, and all those things you have to use in acting when you're on film or going for an audition.

I think most people don't really understand all that it takes to stand on your toes, and to be able to jump and land without any noise, or for a male dancer to be able to lift a girl. All of these things look so effortless, but there's an attention to detail and years of training, as well as being able to transform into a character and being able to meld all of those things together.

I began to fear that the Graham work was not in lots of ways sufficient for me. I suppose it came about from looking at other dancing and being involved with the ballet - something about the air and the way she thought about dancing.

I'd taken, like, maybe some African dance classes a couple of times, but I wasn't a musical theater person at all.

Ballet is a finite art - your body won't let you do it forever, so I wanted to do it while I could.

I was an arts kid in every form of the word you can imagine. I wanted to sing and dance and act - I wanted to do it all. At a very young age, I was put in performing arts schools where I got to do those things every single day.

Initially, I was into dance and learnt Bharatnatyam for eight years. I appeared on various TV shows.

My proficiency with ballet was on a steep decline the more I skated.

I did ballet as a child and started again seven years ago. I love that you hear this exquisite music, and for a moment, you feel like a thing of beauty; it's changed my awareness of my body.

I think all dancers are control freaks a bit. We just want to be in control of ourselves and our bodies. That's just what the ballet structure, I think, kind of puts inside of you.

I did ballet at the Menlo Park Academy of Dance from age 4 to 11, but then I switched to ballroom, and I've been doing that ever since.

I remember watching Audrey Hepburn dancing in movies, and I was inspired by how graceful she looked, though I understand it was no easy task.