Jacques d'Amboise Quotes

I have one coach and one coach only. His name is Alexander Vetrov. They brought him in for me when I joined the Bolshoi. He was a dancer with the Bolshoi, and we work very intensely together.

And then you have the classical ballerinas, they're like sopranos. Applied to the dance.

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.

There's the tradition of the 19th-century ballets, and the 20th century has had a difficult time with that tradition. And it's had a difficult time with many components of the Romantic imagination because of modernism.

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

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.

'The Leaves Are Fading' had something of a vogue when Antony Tudor made it in 1975, largely because of Gelsey Kirkland's ravishing performance.

Instead of watching cartoons when I was little, I had Russian ballet videos from, like, the 1950s and 1940s.

I had daydreamed through many performances of Swan Lake, thinking the dancing tutus only ever conveyed one aspect of swans: their beauty gliding on water. I wondered what it would be like to use male dancers and bring out swans' aggressive, muscular side.

I am a trained classical dancer.

Certainly, when you train as a classical dancer, you are very much influenced by 'Giselle.' You see it all the time; you start to learn the steps a little.

Having done so many versions, I never felt like an artist in 'Swan Lake.'

I didn't know what types of movies I wanted to do. I want to do things that are different. I want to take my time with each role.

My mum took me to the ballet at three, and that was the only time I sat still, with jaw open, mesmerised. She brought me home, and I wouldn't stop dancing.

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

I have a penchant for playing God's clowns. Actually, I played Nijinsky once, and he used to call himself God's clown.

For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence.

I'm a natural piano player. So all the practicing I do at this point is in my head. If I don't play for a year, my chops aren't going to get any worse. I've spent my time playing scales, and I don't necessarily want to play any faster than I play. So everything I do at this point is more philosophical.

All the New York City Ballet does is hit beautiful home runs.

The dance world was a big part of my growing up.

The ballet makes us look at those bodies, it makes us listen to that music, it makes us wonder at the geometry, of the way they come together. The way that extraordinary space is controlled and given such emotional force.

Dance is very, very old. With Louis XIV at Versailles is where ballet started.

While other girls swooned over The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, I worshipped Rudolf Nureyev and Isadora Duncan.

I'm really influenced by Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.

There were many good actresses in my time like Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds, but I was the only dancer.