George Balanchine Quotes

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.

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.

I don't have a past. I have a continuous present. The past is part of the present, just as the future is. We exist in time.

What are you waiting for? What are you saving for? Now is all there is.

Someone once said that dancers work just as hard as policeman, always alert, always tense. But I don't agree with that because policeman don't have to look beautiful at the same time.

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

The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener.

Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays.

Dance is music made visible

Storyless is not abstract. Two dancers on the stage are enough material for a story; for me, they are already a story in themselves

Music must be seen, and dance must be heard

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

Choreography is simpler than you think. Just go and do, and don't think so much about it. Just make something interesting.

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.

See the music, hear the dance.

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

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

Ballet is important and significant - yes. But first of all, it is a pleasure.

I've got more energy now than when I was younger because I know exactly what I want to do.

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.

Ballet will speak for itself. About itself.

They are poets of gesture.

In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell. We can't dance synonyms.

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?

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.

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

I am a cloud - in trousers.

Your eyes is camera and your brain is a file cabinet.

The woman's function is to fascinate men.

My muse must come to me on union time.

I have no literary approach - except to literature.

I am a choreographer. A choreographer is a poet. I do not create. God creates. I assemble and I will steal from everywhere to do it.

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.