Juan Diego Florez Quotes

All the things I do in my videos - the jumps, twirls and back bends - will also be onstage.

I know I'm an opera singer, but we're actors, too.

It was my contention that opera can not only pay for itself if it is well given, but it can also command a much wider audience if given like a play with lots of rehearsals and wonderful singers that fit the role.

You know, back in acting school they always teach you, 'Make bold choices and look for activities that are interesting.'

I was a dancer first, which made me realize how much I loved performing.

I would like to do a musical, if I could find a cool one. A song-and-dance role is closer to me personally than other characters I play.

I became fascinated by the fact that you could translate written material into performance.

When I was a kid, toe dancing and toe shoes had a meaning in our culture as a serious kind of art.

I think singing and acting go hand in hand. Take an R&B singer: one song says, 'I love you,' the next is, 'Baby, don't leave me', the next is, 'If you leave me I don't care.' You have to drop in and out of different perspectives.

Music is a very big part of my preparation as an actor.

So I'm truly an actor who sings, and not a singer who acts.

I don't think of myself as a dancer. I think of myself as a singer-actress who moves really well.

I want to be in a musical. I love music, and just to be able to mash the music and the acting together, it would be just incredible.

I began dancing when I was 7 years old. I was told that I had the perfect ballet dancer's body and had these crazy high arches in my feet that resulted in an amazing point. Ballet was very disciplined and, frankly, a little boring, so I eventually transitioned to gymnastics. I loved that, although I never reached a competitive level.

I just love performing so much, and I threw myself into every musical theater production that was going in my home town and at school. And then, I went to the National Youth Music Theatre, which was really a galvanizing experience for me when I was 17.

With my dad coming from a theatre tradition, there was a lot of preparation before auditions. Not just in terms of saying the lines correctly but a process of entering into what it was all about.

That's what separates actors - I'll take any risk for a performance.

I love to sing, but I really only love to do it when it goes along with acting, when it's my character singing. I'd rather not do an album or tour.

Once you're in a musical, there is a huge opportunity for that, singing and dancing, 'Aha!' and 'Tada' at the end of the numbers; but it's a different kind of discipline you have to go through to maintain that kind of performance.

My go-go dancing was not your typical go-go dancing: I really was doing performance art. I would do dramatic, elaborate lyricals across the bar. I learned a lot, actually, as an artist during that time.

I always wanted to be known as an actor who sings and not a singer who acts.

The goal, when you're playing a character that's super beloved from a movie, is to honor what the actor before you has done and then really just expand, which is what you get to do in a musical because you have songs, choreography, and everything is happening in real time.

I grew up dancing and singing and I just love everything about that.

My first love is acting, but dancing comes naturally to me.

In theatre or in ballet, the ballerina always passes on what they know. It's a hands-on craft. You can't really learn the soul and the pathos of it if you just see a video. It has to be taught by someone who is in the know.