Ballet World Quotes

In the world of classical ballet there are only a handful of story ballets, so getting a new one is cause for excitement.

I want the ballet world to be given the respect that it deserves and to be seen by more people - for so many to experience the beauty that I've received from the ballet world.

At the time I started in ballet they were dancing 'The Spirit of Champagne' on pointe, in Paris. I thought, 'I don't want to dance the spirit of champagne, I want to drink it!

I feel like I represent every young dancer, and even non-dancer, who felt they were not accepted by the ballet world. I'd like to think that they can see themselves in me.

Ballet is incestuous. This world is smaller than small.

I think that having a platform and having a voice to be seen by people beyond the classical ballet world has really been my power, I feel.

The music industry is so easy compared to the ballet world.

I think that, like any kind of career, there are many different people involved in the ballet world.

I think the leotard for me became, after I retired, a sort of a symbol of the confines of still fitting into the ballet world in mind and body.

A young girl reached out to me to be her mentor one day, which I didn't really know anything about. What I did remember was what it was to be alone as an African-American dancer in the ballet world and wanting to connect with someone who looks like me.

Most dancers have no awareness of how they look; half of them think they're fat. There is anorexia in the ballet world; there are those things.

Many dancers are content with the repertoire they're given. Others are dissatisfied but don't know why. Then there are a few like me that are curious and grab at everything. Can that curiosity thrive in the ballet world, or should it exist elsewhere? That's the eternal question.

It's a very insular world, ballet. I feel if I had stayed much longer, it would've consumed me. I performed six days a week and rehearsed 10-plus hours a day. And you only see the people that you work with.

The ballet world, it's a crazy world.

It's going to take a while before we see a real shift in the students and the dancers that are going into professional companies because it takes so many years of training, but I do think that there's a new crop of dancers, of minority dancers that are entering into the ballet world.