Jean-Georges Noverre Quotes

19 quotes in 413 categories

• This art, born of genius and good taste, can become beautiful and varied to an infinite degree.
• Dancing and ballets would undoubtedly take on a new lease on life, if the customs established by a spirit of fear and jealousy did not…
• In order to dance well, nothing is so important as the turning outwards of the thigh; and nothing is so natural to men as the…
• The abuse of the best things is always detrimental.
• True art consists in concealing art.
• It is shameful that dancing should renounce the empire it might assert over the mind and only endeavor to please the sight.
• A fine picture is but the image of nature; a finished ballet is nature herself.
• If our ballets be feeble, monotonous and dull, if they be devoid of ideas, meaning, expression and character, it is less the fault of the…
• At our theaters we only see feeble copies of the copies that have proceeded them, renounce that slavish routine which keeps your art in its…
• I cannot avoid condemning all those who, from self-conceit have the pretension to imitate great artists of the past. If their powers of emotion be…
• In order that our art may arrive at the degree of the sublime which I demand and hope for, it is imperative for dancers to…
• Applause lavished at a whim and without discernment, often proves the ruin of young people training for a stage career.
• The defect in wisdom and taste which exists among the majority of dancers is due to the bad education which they generally receive. They apply…
• I should never conclude were I to speak to you of all the misfortunes which have their origin in the faulty carriage of the body.…
• No matter the style, the farther one goes the more obstacles increase, and the more distant appears the object it is desired to attain. Again,…
• It is not a question of skimming the surface of the art, it must be probed to its depths, for to seize upon superficial things…
• The defects born of habit are innumerable. I see every child occupied in some way in disarranging and disfiguring his physique; some displace the ankles…
• I will make an average man into an average dancer, provided he be passably well made. I will teach him how to move his arms…
• When the music and dance create with accord...their magic captivates both the heart and the mind.

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