Laurieann Gibson Quotes

I was a ballet dancer growing up and that's what I was convinced I would be.

I started dancing when I was four years old and then was in class until I was about 20 years old or so, and then primarily was dancing just in shows that I was doing, but not really studying and training.

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

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

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.

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 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 when I was five, and I trained intensively as a competitive dancer up until the end of high school. I did all genres, and later on a did a lot of extra ballet on top of that. I actually got accepted to Julliard for dance during my senior year, but I ultimately turned it down to come to L.A. to act.

As soon as I started dancing at 14, I knew I was always going to be a professional dancer.

I went away when I was 9 to a ballet school. I thought I wanted to be a dancer, but eight years of ballet cured me of that.

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

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

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.

Dance is a profession with an expiration date for many people.

I didn't grow up on dance class. I was always natural. I've been in the industry since I was eight and I've always had a choreographer since then. But I never really took ballet or anything like that.

Seeing 'Revelations' made me want to be a professional dancer.

I started out as a dancer as a kid; I've been dancing since I was 4. So performing was always part of what I was.

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.

And I just thought, this is what I want to be. And I knew that dancing would be my chosen profession.

I studied dance at a high school arts magnet program before moving on to Miami's New World School of the Arts, and from there, I went on to study at The Juilliard School.

At 11, I went to Misha's school for two summers. So when I wasn't in that school, I was taking classes at David Howard or Robert Denver's studios - kind of legendary places - and there was one summer where Alexander Godunov sort of took me under his wing; the memory's a little murky, but I felt as if I was his project for those weeks.

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.

A friend of my mother's, Irene Lopez, was a Spanish dancer. She saw me bopping around the room and said to my mother, 'Rosita might have talent. Can I take her to my dance teacher?' There was no thought of a career at that time, but I knew I loved the attention, and that's so much a part of being a performer.

It became my first passion, the first thing I really fell in love with. I joined the Ralph Robinson Ballet company, and then went to New York and became a dancer. I thought I'd die before I did anything else.

While dancing for me was fun, becoming a choreographer was not something I wanted to do.