Sarah Hay Quotes

Apparently, I have good feet for ballet.

At 7, I was at the barre and dancing at folk festivals. Then I was a student with the ballet school of the Metropolitan Opera.

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

I wanted to be a ballet teacher.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

At age 14, coming to the U.S., all I knew was American Ballet Theatre, Baryshnikov, Nureyev, and some of the European companies. I barely knew anything about Balanchine.

I trained as a ballet dancer - well, I started when I was two and a half, and was serious about it from when I was eight until I was 18.

I think ballet is pretty open about what music is used, actually.

I ended up training only for four years before I was accepted into American Ballet Theater in New York City.

Everything I was being shown was ABT, so I grew up watching these videos of [Mikhail] Baryshnikov, Gelsey [Kirkland] and Paloma [Herrera]. Paloma and Angel [Corella] were the first people I ever saw dance live.

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.

My mom put me in dance classes when I was 5 years old.

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.

I started taking ballet lessons when I was three and a half and I still take dance classes.

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.

With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself.

The heart of the classical repertory is the Tchaikovsky-Petipa 'Sleeping Beauty,' and no ballet is harder to get right.

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

Look at where I lived! Four blocks from Lincoln Center. I used to play in the fountain. And then I started taking dance lessons. I was in 'The Nutcracker' for the N.Y. City Ballet when I was 8 and dancing in 'The Firebird' for George Balanchine when I was 9. Believe me, that's something you don't ever forget.