George Balanchine Quotes

When I would create a dance, I wouldn't have the luxury that ballet people do when they take a piece of music and impose a dance upon it. What we did in motion pictures was have a song and within that song try to elaborate. My usual method was to do what a writer does: get a plot.

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.

For me, the choreography always comes from the music.

I've made storylines through dance to complement the music. It's all about enhancing the singing and acting. It's been an amazing learning curve for me.

Unlike a lot of choreographers, I don't always start with the music. I often start with a visual artist, and then find music that fits the world of that visual artist.

I'm an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.

Ornette Coleman is a real musician. He takes all of the things he's thinking about in the world - which is a whole universe upon universe - and translates this into music.

Improvisation is a compositional method.

I never think about rhythm versus melody; I've always just played to what's in my head.

I have always loved contemporary dance, but it has always been a bit of a mystery to me. But choreography is very much like what I do when you are putting characters in frame on the page. It's so impressive what they do with their bodies. It's like painting: an abstraction.

My own physicality, not an abstract idea, makes me a choreographer.

I can't act without music very well.

I agree totally with Metheny regarding the sound influencing the way you play.

My method is much like choreography. I don't sit at a table. I work in a room with people.

I don't think anybody really super-consciously tries to develop a style to play.

Working improvisationally in my studio with dancers, it's completely different. We don't have any starting point; we don't have an end point. We don't have anything we are trying to show or do. The picture evolves from nowhere.

My philosophy on choreography is that the making of a ballet is a team effort, and we're in this together. It's not me hammering on them. It's more about how we can elevate this piece collectively to something great.

I try to take whatever I can from the songs I grew up listening to, these vibed-out pop numbers, and make them my own in some weird way.

I let the song guide me. I move through the space that I'm given rather than trying to make an impression on the material. I'm curious to learn from the music.

I feel like my music is like - there are always new influences in there.

I believe I am yet to dance my favorite role, but I am pretty open to adapting to different characters. I would love to be Odette in Swan Lake one day. I think that would be the ultimate role.

Ballet is a riddle of means and ends.

I don't like to go into the studio with all the songs worked out and planned before hand ... you've got to give the band something to use its imagination on as well. That can make a very ordinary song come alive into something totally different ... the X-factor - so important in rock and roll - which is the feel.

I believe that improvisation is really just a directorial tool. It's a writing tool. It's not so much that the actors get to say whatever they want, whatever pops into their head. It's an opportunity to write the last draft of the screenplay as you're working on it.

We must first realize that dancing is an absolutely independent art, not merely a secondary accompanying one. I believe that it is one of the great arts. . . . The important thing in ballet is the movement itself. A ballet may contain a story, but the visual spectacle . . . is the essential element. The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they reach the audience through the eye. It's the illusion created which convinces the audience, much as it is with the work of a magician.