Misty Copeland Quotes

I've danced since I was 5 and went to the School of American Ballet at Lincoln Center at 7.

After I finished 'Center Stage,' I went back to San Francisco, and I danced for seven seasons with the San Francisco Ballet.

I do take class because I still dance, and yes, I do slip into class with the Royal Ballet from time to time.

With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself.

I've always wanted to be a professional dancer, I'd always wanted to be a ballerina. I trained for 13 years but it never came to be.

I knew I wanted to be a ballet dancer, but what kind, I wasn't sure. My two dream companies had been New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater.

When I first moved to New York I wanted to be a dancer, I danced professionally for years, living a hand-to-mouth existence.

My goal has always been to be a principal dancer with ABT.

I'm a classical ballet dancer, and at the end of the day I want to be with American Ballet Theater, performing classical ballets.

In order to dance professionally, you have to start at a young age. No matter what, your muscle structure and your bones have to be groomed from a very young age. Nobody wakes up at 17 and decides to become a ballet dancer.

I was born in Toronto and studied with the National Ballet of Canada. I went to school to study dance, slept on the floor, ate nothing, waitressed - and then there was a Mary J. Blige audition.

The moment the curtain rose on that first ballet, I knew something wonderful and new had come into my life. I can still see the first scene. The ballet was Divertimento No. 15.

I find that dancers are only well trained in ballet these days.

I did grow up in France, and even though I didn't go to the school or dance with the Paris Opera Ballet, I absorbed similar ideas in my training. I understand the scale of a big company. I danced for one for almost 20 years.

I wanted to be a ballet teacher.

The first year with ABT I learned 13 new roles. Most were lengthy ballets, more complicated than I was used to. I have suffered from tendinitis since I was 13, and it flared up again until the pain was paralyzing. There were times I prayed I'd be sick so I wouldn't have to go on.

I've never danced professionally as a ballet dancer, but all of my training is ballet, and I am a Fosse dancer.

Dancing is a tough career, but I'm glad I spent it at the Royal Ballet.

I think I tended toward the Russian training because my first teacher taught a version of Vaganova, and it was drilled into me that that was the best system, and also at the time there were a lot of great Russian stars.

I was raised with a lot of classical music. I loved ballet. I was a bun head for 10 years.

I had classical training at London's Royal Ballet School, and my first job was with the Semperoper Dresden ballet company in Germany.

When I was 16, I moved to Torrance, California to train at a more advanced studio, and by 19, I joined the American Ballet Theatre in New York. It all happened so fast - it was pretty unheard of that someone could train for so few years and become a professional at one of the most elite dance companies in the United States.

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 joined the Royal Ballet School when I was 13. Before then, I'd done ballet twice a week after school. The rest of my class had started aged 11, so I'd missed two years and was really far behind.

I wanted to be a dancer from when I was about nine or something like that and started ballet. I used to really like it and got into it and did it full time for a couple of years. I did a lot of ballet but I traded that in for acting when I was about 15.