George Balanchine

See the music, hear the dance.

— George Balanchine

Ballet dancing is arduous, strenuous activity. Students are engaged in physical training that rivals the training Olympic athletes undergo. At the same…

— George Balanchine

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

— George Balanchine

“What are you waiting for? Now is all there is!”

— George Balanchine

I have no literary approach - except to literature.

— George Balanchine

The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they reach the audience through the eye. It's the illusion created which convinces the…

— George Balanchine

Someone once said that dancers work just as hard as policeman, always alert, always tense. But i dont agree with that because…

— George Balanchine

Ballet will speak for itself. About itself.

— George Balanchine

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

— George Balanchine

My muse must come to me on union time.

— George Balanchine

The woman's function is to fascinate men.

— George Balanchine

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

— George Balanchine

They are poets of gesture.

— George Balanchine

If you don't feel challenged, it's because you're not doing enough. Ballet should never feel comfortable. Comfortable is lazy! If you're comfortable…

— George Balanchine

One is born to be a dancer. No teacher can work miracles, nor will years of training make a good dancer of…

— George Balanchine

“Dancing is music made visible.”

— George Balanchine

Dance is music made visible

— George Balanchine

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

— George Balanchine

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

— George Balanchine

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

— George Balanchine

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

— George Balanchine

“I like to do things certain ways and I disagree with everybody but I don't even want to argue.”

— George Balanchine

I can always invent movement, and sometimes it can be fitted into the right place, but that is not choreography. It is…

— George Balanchine

I don't have a past. I have a continuous present. The past is part of the present, just as the future is.…

— George Balanchine

We must first realize that dancing is an absolutely independent art, not merely a secondary accompanying one. I believe that it is…

— George Balanchine