George Balanchine Quotes

Quotes about:

• If you don't feel challenged, it's because you're not doing enough. Ballet should never feel comfortable. Comfortable is lazy! If you're comfortable when you dance, you're not pushing yourself hard enough. 100 % is not enough. You have to give 200%. One tendu takes years of hard work and will never be perfect. Everything in ballet is a challenge.

  George Balanchine

  Hard Work, Years, Giving

  180 Copy quote

• Why are you stingy with yourselves? Why are you holding back? What are you saving for - for another time? There are no other times. There is only now. Right now.

  George Balanchine

  Saving, Holding Back, Right Now

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  222 Copy quote

• Music must be seen, and dance must be heard

  George Balanchine

  Heard

  107 Copy quote

• I don't want people who want to dance; I want people who have to dance.

  George Balanchine

  Inspirational, Motivational, Dance

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  145 Copy quote

• Dance is music made visible

  George Balanchine

  Dance, Made, Visible

  120 Copy quote

• We must first realize that dancing is an absolutely independent art, not merely a secondary accompanying one. I believe that it is one of the great arts. . . . The important thing in ballet is the movement itself. A ballet may contain a story, but the visual spectacle . . . is the essential element. The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they reach the audience through the eye. It's the illusion created which convinces the audience, much as it is with the work of a magician.

  George Balanchine

  Art, Believe, Independent

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  182 Copy quote

• First comes the sweat. Then comes the beauty if you're very lucky and have said your prayers.

  George Balanchine

  Dance, Prayer, Sweat

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  175 Copy quote

• In my ballets, woman is first. Men are consorts. God made men to sing the praises of women. They are not equal to men: They are better.

  George Balanchine

  Dance, Men, Firsts

  162 Copy quote

• What are you waiting for? What are you saving for? Now is all there is.

  George Balanchine

  Waiting, Saving

  146 Copy quote

• I don't have a past. I have a continuous present. The past is part of the present, just as the future is. We exist in time.

  George Balanchine

  Past

  148 Copy quote

• Storyless is not abstract. Two dancers on the stage are enough material for a story; for me, they are already a story in themselves

  George Balanchine

  Two, Dancer, Stories

  119 Copy quote

• Someone once said that dancers work just as hard as policeman, always alert, always tense. But I don't agree with that because policeman don't have to look beautiful at the same time.

  George Balanchine

  Beautiful, Dance, Looks

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  148 Copy quote

• The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener.

  George Balanchine

  Beautiful, Dance, Flower

  139 Copy quote

• Ballet dancing is arduous, strenuous activity. Students are engaged in physical training that rivals the training Olympic athletes undergo. At the same time, they strive for physical perfection not for the prowess alone but as a way of achieving the means necessary to express the pure nature of their art.

  George Balanchine

  Dance, Art, Athlete

  97 Copy quote

• Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays.

  George Balanchine

  Dance, Ballet Class, Play

  132 Copy quote

• Ballet is important and significant - yes. But first of all, it is a pleasure.

  George Balanchine

  Dance, Ballet, Important

  74 Copy quote

• See the music, hear the dance.

  George Balanchine

  Dance

  "Balanchine Said" by Arlene Croce, www.newyorker.com. January 26, 2009.

  84 Copy quote

• One is born to be a dancer. No teacher can work miracles, nor will years of training make a good dancer of an untalented pupil. One may be able to acquire a certain technical facility, but no one can ever 'acquire an exceptional talent.' I have never prided myself on having an unusually gifted pupil. A Pavlova is no one's pupil but God's.

  George Balanchine

  Dance, Teacher, Years

  127 Copy quote

• The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.

  George Balanchine

  Dance, Mirrors, Dancing

  80 Copy quote

• Choreography is simpler than you think. Just go and do, and don't think so much about it. Just make something interesting.

  George Balanchine

  Motivational, Dance, Thinking

  93 Copy quote

• I cannot move, I cannot even want to move, unless I hear the music first.

  George Balanchine

  Moving, Listening, Want

  83 Copy quote

• It's like the time capsule with everything in it. Or like the seed that when you plant it, becomes the enormous tree with leaves and fruit. Everybody was in that little seed, and so everything can open. The tree of dance is like that. It just takes a long, long time to blossom.

  George Balanchine

  Dance, Long, Tree

  88 Copy quote

• Put a man and a girl on stage and there is already a story; a man and two girls, there's already a plot.

  George Balanchine

  Girl, Dance, Men

  97 Copy quote

• God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it - from what I see, from what the dancers can do, from what others do.

  George Balanchine

  Dance, Stealing, Ballet Teachers

  94 Copy quote

• They are poets of gesture.

  George Balanchine

  Dancing, Gestures, Poet

  21 Copy quote

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