Welcome to our collection of quotes by George Balanchine
Wikipedia Summary for George Balanchine
George Balanchine (born Georgiy Melitonovich Balanchivadze; Georgian: გიორგი მელიტონის ძე ბალანჩივაძე; January 22, 1904 (O. S. January 9) – April 30, 1983) was a Georgian-American ballet choreographer who was one of the most influential 20th-century choreographers. Styled as the father of American ballet, he co-founded the New York City Ballet and remained its Artistic Director for more than 35 years. His choreography is characterized by plotless ballets with minimal costume and décor, performed to classical and neoclassical music.
Born in St. Petersburg, Balanchine took the standards and technique from his time at the Imperial Ballet School and fused it with other schools of movement that he had adopted during his tenure on Broadway and in Hollywood, creating his signature "neoclassical style".
He was a choreographer known for his musicality; he expressed music with dance and worked extensively with leading composers of his time like Igor Stravinsky. Balanchine was invited to America in 1933 by a young arts patron named Lincoln Kirstein, and together they founded the School of American Ballet. Along with Kirstein, Balanchine also co-founded the New York City Ballet (NYCB).
In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell we can't dance synonyms.
Ballet will speak for itself. About itself.
Ballet is important and significant -- yes. But first of all it is a pleasure.
Choreography is simpler than you think. Just go and do, and don't think so much about it. Just make something interesting.
I can always invent movement, and sometimes it can be fitted into the right place, but that is not choreography. It is the music that dictates the whole shape of the work. I do not believe in the permanence of anything in ballet save the purely classical.
I am a cloud -- in trousers.
In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell. We can't dance synonyms.
Your eyes is camera and your brain is a file cabinet.
I could never make a ballet by wrinkling my brow and concentrating. If you set out deliberately to make a masterpiece, how will you ever get it finished?
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.
First comes the sweat. Then comes the beauty if you're very lucky and have said your prayers.
The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.
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.
See the music, hear the dance.
Dance is music made visible.
I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance.
I don't want people who want to dance; I want people who have to dance.
Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays.
The pointes for girls, I always say, have to be like an elephant's trunk; strong and yet flexible and soft.
One is born to be a great dancer.
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.
In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell... we can't dance synonyms.
Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned.
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.
The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener.