Natalia Makarova Quotes

I've always been excited by the strangeness of ballet, but I can't bear it when people just come forward and do a turn in the air for no reason.

I am different because I have better schooling, better understanding of the line, gesture, how feet working, positions. They taught me modern things... and I wanted to give what I had: my schooling.

When I was a kid, toe dancing and toe shoes had a meaning in our culture as a serious kind of art.

Every company has its style, and that's what makes the Bolshoi so impressive: their attack on jumps or their attack on choreography.

I began to fear that the Graham work was not in lots of ways sufficient for me. I suppose it came about from looking at other dancing and being involved with the ballet - something about the air and the way she thought about dancing.

I had classical training at London's Royal Ballet School, and my first job was with the Semperoper Dresden ballet company in Germany.

For ballet dancers, style is about melding personal expression with physical form.

My movement is usually about finding the balance between artistry, athleticism, and musicality. It always originates with a classical basis and expands outwards from that platform.

My choreography is very classically based.

The Fosse technique really does have to have a delicacy and an elegance to it.

I am a trained classical dancer.

If the dance is right, there shouldn't be a single superfluous movement.

At the ballet classes I took when I first came to New York, I would see great dancers like Cynthia Gregory and Lupe Serrano. I would look at them and study what they could do, and what I couldn't do. And then I'd think maybe they should try what I could do.

I think 'Tap Dogs' has lasted so long because people have a natural interest in tap dancing. This form of dancing can't be dated, it's such an intriguing form of dance because the feet are also an an instrument.

I think I'm the same dancer everywhere. But I've learned a lot with Bolshoi - the history of the theater, the technique of the theater, different nuances in my technique.

It's one of my strongest dance pieces - having just done Play Without Words which was veering away from a lot of dance - I thought it would be nice to go back to something with almost the most dance I'd done.

All the New York City Ballet does is hit beautiful home runs.

I was a dancer first, which made me realize how much I loved performing.

I would describe my dancing talents as incredibly deep.

I am dancing all the time. Every gesture, the body line of every pose, the way I get from place to place, the movement in the acting - none of it would be the way it is if I weren't a dancer.

The rewards of dancing are very different from choreographing.

The real American type can never be a ballet dancer. The legs are too long, the body too supple and the spirit too free for this school of affected grace and toe walking.

If I had to reflect on the finest classical male ballet dancers of my time, Vladimir Vasiliev of the Bolshoi and the Danish dancer Eric Bruhn were, I feel, without peer.

I started dancing when I was 5 years old. Ballet. Flamenco.

If anyone is calling me to choreograph a dance, they know my style, and they know I am a taskmaster. They want to present themselves as a good dancer before their fans, and that is why they want me to choreograph.