Robert Battle Quotes

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

I was privileged to be able to study a year with Martha Graham, the last year she was teaching.

The life of a dancer is tragically short. What is remarkable about the New York City Ballet is that it makes us forget that. Because it keeps the ballet alive.

I can't remember how many years it's been since I last saw a David Parsons program or what I saw whenever it was, but that isn't surprising, since I can't really remember the first half of a David Parsons program while I'm watching the second half.

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

I had always choreographed a little, beginning in high school. And I leaned toward choreography. I always had an overview of what was going on.

It's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.

Choreographers use me as the old guy who still dances. Not that I put on white tights.

I was married to a dancer who had a dance company in New York City, and she toured.

I was a late bloomer, but I had a career as a contemporary dancer before that, so I had some kind of connection to this world. But I was always a little more in love with the drama of dancing than the aesthetics, so I thought, 'Why don't you give it a chance if you think you can do it a little different?'

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'd studied dance in Chicago every summer end taught it all winter, and I was well-rounded. I wasn't worried about getting a job on Broadway. In fact, I got one the first week.

Dancers can get to see almost everything now. When I used to go into companies to make a piece, the dancers had hardly ever seen my work. Now they can watch it on YouTube. It means they're much faster at picking up material.

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.

I've studied dance since I was very young, and I continue to study ballet.

I think the inception of my interest in arts was when I was around 9 or 10 and I started dancing. I was really convinced that I was going to go to New York and be onstage in 'A Chorus Line.'

I was always the kid down the street who got the other kids to put on a show. But it was only when I was 19, and discovered ballet and contemporary dance, that I got interested in the fact that you could have a whole evening of dance - rather than just waiting for the dancers in a musical.

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.

Growing up, I was a dancer. I wanted to be a choreographer.

I decided to go to dance school at 22, which is late for a dancer.

Ditya Bhande is a nice dancer.

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

People don't really know, but I went to Dance Theatre of Harlem in New York.

I taught and studied dance in college, and for over a decade, I thought that would be my career: tap dancer, ballet dancer, modern dancer. I still find myself doing some tumbling or interpretive dancing in the grocery store every now and then.