I've always been a bit of a poser. I was chucked out of ballet lessons for looking in the mirror.
Abbey Clancy
I started with ballet and then my cousin Sarah introduced me to her tap teachers.
Adam Garcia
When I was a kid, I'd always wanted to take karate, but my parents wouldn't let me because I did a lot of other things, including ballet.
Adena Friedman
There might've been wires, but I have this ability to make myself light. Well you know what, in ballet, when you kind of lift yourself here, it's all up in the head.
Albert Finney
In swimming at my level it's about control of the small movements. A good ballet dancer floats across the stage, the best sprinters virtually abolish gravity. All motion occurs in the right direction.
Alexander Dale Oen
Some people are painters, and some are ballet dancers, and I'm a writer.
Alice Walker
I still love to see the ballet. And I love to boogie.
Alicia Vikander
I push myself hard. I don't like pain, exactly, but as a ballerina, I lived in constant pain. At ballet school in Stockholm, I remember we had a locker where if someone had been to the doctor and gotten painkillers, we divided them among us. In a sense, we were all addicted.
Being in ballet school and being in leotards in front of a mirror I don't know how many hours a day was quite tough.
I'd quit ballet school, which I thought was going to be my path, but my gut instinct told me to do something different.
I've always been a figure skater and ballet dancer. I love physical comedy, and any chance that I get to do that... that is so me.
Allison Janney
I went to Indiana University for college for a couple of years, where I double majored in dance and journalism, and after my sophomore year there, I went to the San Francisco Ballet school for the summer, but then they offered me a scholarship to stay for the year.
Amanda Schull
I was an apprentice at the San Francisco Ballet, and a casting director came to one of our rehearsals to scout talent for 'Center Stage.' I landed the role of Jodie.
As a dancer, I know couples that have stayed married but separated to dance on different continents. Dance in general, but ballet in particular, is such a finite career. You can't do it later in life, and it's something that I think a dancer has to have some selfishness to fulfill.
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.
I take ballet class as often as possible - up to 5 times a week - and try to go to the gym on the days that I don't take class. I also do a floor barre/Pilates mat class almost everyday.
It's hard with ballet because your aesthetic really is important. It's different from acting and from film. Nobody wants to watch somebody who is sickly thin. And it's interesting because I have danced with people who are ill, have eating disorders, and a light goes off within them.
Ballet is a finite art - your body won't let you do it forever, so I wanted to do it while I could.
I'm always ballet ready.
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.
I think that, like any kind of career, there are many different people involved in the ballet world.
After I finished 'Center Stage,' I went back to San Francisco, and I danced for seven seasons with the San Francisco Ballet.
I went to art school when I was little. I took ballet lessons. I played a little kick ball. I was sort of into everything because I had too much energy and I didn't know where to put it. When I was a preteen, I got into singing, and became really obsessed with it.
I thought 'Out of Africa' would be a beautiful ballet.
Well, I took ballet for many, many years, so my whole childhood really revolved around dance class. I grew up around dance; my mother was a dancer.
I was a dancer for long time. And you always hear that ballet is the core of dance, and that - once you have that down - you can do everything else. For me, jazz is like that for music.
Acting is a sense of wonder and magic and mystery for me and when life takes me on a new journey, I simply remember the smile my first ballet recital put on my face and I move forward.
When life takes me on a new journey, I simply remember the smile my first ballet recital put on my face and I move forward.
No live performance can ever be perfect, and that's what keeps you on your toes - it pushes you to practice harder, show up for that 8 A.M. ballet class, and walk through the stage door every night just to have the chance to do it all again.
Figure skating is an unlikely Olympic event but its good television. It's sort of a combination of gymnastics and ballet. A little sexy too which doesn't hurt.
When other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers I kind of wanted to be a vampire.
I was a daughterless mother. I had nowhere to put the things a mother places on her daughter. The nail polish I used to paint our toenails hardened. Our favorite videos gathered dust. Her small apron was in a box in the attic. Her shoes - the sparkly ones, the leopard rain boots, the ballet slippers - stood in a corner.
As an adult, I took ballet classes three times a week, and I believed it gave me better posture, a stronger body, and made me more graceful.
Dance has been a driving force in my life for 25 years. From music videos and hip hop, to jazz and musical theater, to ballet and classic modern dance, I have had extensive exposure to a variety of techniques that inspire my own electric style.
I didn't really know anything about Margot Fonteyn. I'd never really been a ballet child, so I had no idea what an incredibly huge icon she was, not just in terms of a creative icon - she was also a style icon. I had no idea she was up there with Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Onassis in terms of that kind of image.
The first show I did was 'The Nutcracker' ballet. I was one of the kids who comes out in the beginning.
I hated the ballet, but I liked performing. I did 20 shows, and I couldn't get the smile off my face.
Sometimes I feel as if sections of my ballets were done for me - that I didn't do them myself.
I've been very physical my whole life. I've done a lot of ballet, fencing and karate, and everything.
I was very much a tomboy. I just couldn't do the pink ballet tutus.
My mom devised a plan to get me out of the house and gave me the choice between ballet or skating. She knew both of those sports were time-consuming and would keep me busy with hours of practice.
My mother always said to carry yourself with dignity and pride, and I just think Audrey Hepburn totally epitomizes that, you know? From such a young age, she was dancing ballet. There was a lot going on in her life... that was during the time of the Nazis.
Ballet costumes are easier that opera because they are designed for movement.
My parents have always given me whatever I wanted. Took me to the ballet, the opera, museum exhibitions. I was always surrounded by art. It's their fault I've become an actress.
I have a personal trainer. But I tried boxing; I tried ballet. I tried everything to see what works best for my body.
I've never danced professionally as a ballet dancer, but all of my training is ballet, and I am a Fosse dancer.
I was not influenced by concerts as a child, but I was very strongly influenced by the ballets I saw.
I did grow up in France, and even though I didn't go to the school or dance with the Paris Opera Ballet, I absorbed similar ideas in my training. I understand the scale of a big company. I danced for one for almost 20 years.
'Swan Lake' is the most difficult thing to portray for a female ballet dancer; it really requires such specific qualities of articulation, agility, strength, and the arm work is something that takes a lot of training.
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.
