George Balanchine

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

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

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

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.

Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned.

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.

The pointes for girls, I always say, have to be like an elephant's trunk; strong and yet flexible and soft.

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

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.

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

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.

One is born to be a great dancer.

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.