Rudolf Nureyev Quotes

I started dancing when I was 5 years old. Ballet. Flamenco.

Ballet is like any other art form in that we all start out knowing nothing about it.

I'm the first one out on the dance floor. In college I had to take jazz, ballet and tap dancing, but, before that, it was just social.

I'm a fantastic dancer!

I think it's one thing to be able to dance, and it's another thing to learn all the wonderful moments of dance because in my day... it was the moving of dance.

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

I think 'Tap Dogs' has lasted so long because people have a natural interest in tap dancing. This form of dancing can't be dated, it's such an intriguing form of dance because the feet are also an an instrument.

I am different because I have better schooling, better understanding of the line, gesture, how feet working, positions. They taught me modern things... and I wanted to give what I had: my schooling.

I started dancing in my room... I wanted to find out more about my movements. I wanted to elaborate on whatever it was that I was doing there.

I've been doing African dance all my life.

Oh, I am not naturally gifted in dancing in any way! Stupidly, I didn't go to those classes in drama school. I was like, 'I don't need that; I'll never be dancing in anything.'

Those 25 dancers we worked with for a day, in as highly productive a way as possible - a long class, a period of teaching bits of the repertory - in fact I didn't teach Bank, I've used parts of Oil and Water.

My body can't demonstrate. It isn't willing to explore movements the way it used to. I've always had to find the movement in myself then show it in myself. If I've got the sense of movement for the character, I expect the dancer to get it too.

Every great dance company, even when it seems poised in perfect balance, needs constant renewal of both repertory and performers.

I wasn't a ballet baby. My first dance class was in an outdoor pavilion when I was three. It was called 'creative movement.' The teacher gave us chiffon scarves in beautiful colors. She turned on some music and said, 'Now go dance.' So for me, dance has always been about self-expression.

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 would describe my dancing talents as incredibly deep.

Choreographers, historically, are born, not made - their talents drive them to it.

I started dancing ballet when I was very young, so my background really is dance. But I remember loving the feeling of being on a stage and having a love for performing from a young age.

I had always choreographed a little, beginning in high school. And I leaned toward choreography. I always had an overview of what was going on.

I was in a competing company and have been dancing since I was four - ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop - so it's a huge part of my life and my music.

I was always the kid down the street who got the other kids to put on a show. But it was only when I was 19, and discovered ballet and contemporary dance, that I got interested in the fact that you could have a whole evening of dance - rather than just waiting for the dancers in a musical.

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'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.

I go through phases of watching a ton of dance/performance, and I am bizarrely well-informed on the subject.