Misty Copeland Quotes

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 find the songs and dances in Hindi films fascinating, and I know I will do justice to them, as I am a trained dancer.

I've always been excited by the strangeness of ballet, but I can't bear it when people just come forward and do a turn in the air for no reason.

Dancers, many dancers today can do so much technically. You can give them steps that are complicated, then more complicated, pyrotechnical - and they can execute these steps to perfection. But to do simple steps with a pure classical line, that is truly difficult.

I have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer's work is.

Dancing for the length of time that I did, it centered me in such a way to be really in tune with my body, and I just feel like I'm physically able to do things because of my ballet background. Without ballet, I don't think I'd look graceful at all on screen.

I wanted to be a professional dancer for a period of time, and I did a lot of dancing and choreography and got paid for it.

I love ballet, and it's a little boring for me to go to the gym because I'm used to the dancing discipline - it's really hard but much more fun.

I frequently go to the ballet, but I don't miss it in the sense that I wish I were still dancing.

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.

Lots of celebrities have had some sort of dance training, especially actors or singers - they have to have some movement skill and be trained physically.

Ditya Bhande is a nice dancer.

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.

Professional dancers are known for their barely-there costumes.

I am a trained classical dancer.

I've never looked at what I do as show business, I guess, because of my connection to the art and how I was introduced to the dance.

When I was still a student, I came out of a performing arts high school, and the female students who were doing traditional dance and ballet were so beautiful. They were beautiful, starting from their postures.

I grew up always wanting to be a dancer, and when I went to New York, I fell in love with the idea of performing in all ways. I saw myself traveling with a company or making my own work and being a little weird. I wasn't thinking about the business side of anything; I just knew that I loved dancing.

Ballet dancing is arduous, strenuous activity. Students are engaged in physical training that rivals the training Olympic athletes undergo. At the same time, they strive for physical perfection not for the prowess alone but as a way of achieving the means necessary to express the pure nature of their art.

But I was 22 before I took my first dance class. I had never been athletic, so I was very stiff; I still am. I think what I got mostly from dance was carriage.

I think with actors, we tend to get rid of characters - and not get rid of them as in discard them or throw them away, but it's just that you take that jacket off because you're going to be putting a different jacket on.

I always try to do something very different with each character because that's why I like to do this, because I can become someone else completely and it's fun.

The pointes for girls, I always say, have to be like an elephant's trunk; strong and yet flexible and soft.

One thing that I don't think I do is play characters. Once you start claiming that you can do something that you're not, you're crazy. I think scripts can really surprise you. You go, "Wow, I did not know that that response could come from me. I did not know that I had that in me." And so, the process of making the movie is just finding that and digging a little deeper.

I think classical ballet dancers dance on pointe because they're simultaneously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies