I think that taking ballet is one of the best things a girl can do. Period.
I really enjoyed watching a ballerina named Denise Dabrowski who used to dance at California Ballet. She was a beautiful ballerina and role model for a lot of young dancers.
When you're a dancer, you start with the basics. You don't all of a sudden do a grand jete and pirouette. You start with first position, second, third.
I had never a thought of training to be a ballerina. I was a normal child. I never dreamed of the tutu.
Technical things are getting more mechanical. Take 'Swan Lake,' the Black Swan pas de deux. Now, my goodness, they're turning not just 32 fouettes - but double or triple pirouettes.
In ballet class, I felt like Ralph Wiggum.
Ballet is an incredibly difficult, beautiful art form that takes a lot of training, a lot of time, and a lot of hard work.
In the world of classical ballet there are only a handful of story ballets, so getting a new one is cause for excitement.
Before founding Ballet Beautiful, I was a ballerina with the New York City Ballet.
Classical ballet is very extreme. You're doing it six days a week, and it's a kind of obsession of perfecting a move. So every muscle in your body has been stretched and tightened, stretched and tightened.
Classical ballet will never die.
Certainly, when you train as a classical dancer, you are very much influenced by 'Giselle.' You see it all the time; you start to learn the steps a little.
Ballet requires movements which are very unnatural. With every step, you do a circular movement of the hip. You turn out from the hip and make your knees point out to the side instead of forward.
I danced six hours a day. My cross to bear is that my children have no interest in ballet. I think they could smell how much I wanted to put their hair in a bun.
For a ballerina, the center of balance is everything - creating a strong center of balance begins with building strong abdominal muscles.
I took ballet when I was eight, like a lot of other people.
You cannot dance an arabesque in 'Swan Lake' and 'Nutcracker' the same way.
I'm always ballet ready.
I am passionate about ballet.
I wanted to be a male ballet dancer.
Ballet targets smaller muscles that you don't often use - instead of working your quads, it works the inside and the back of your leg.
With ballet, you're really focused on the inner thigh and butt and just lifting and lengthening everything, including your arms. You're not using weights, but holding up the weight of your own arms is a challenge.
Ballet was just something that I always wanted to do.
I trained as a ballet dancer - well, I started when I was two and a half, and was serious about it from when I was eight until I was 18.
Most ballerinas take their first ballet class when they are 5 or 6 years old. I was 13 when I took mine on the basketball court of the San Pedro Boys & Girls Club in California.
