19th century Quote by Twyla Tharp

The eternal and uneasy relationship between ballet and modern dance endures, but radically altered in tone and intensity.

— Robert Gottlieb

So many people report to be contemporary dancers, and they're not. They are sort of jazz dancers that feel like they're throwing a bit…

— Nigel Lythgoe

I think that I'm so fortunate to have found classical ballet. It completely changed my life and it shaped the person that I am…

— Misty Copeland

When I was young, I couldn't think about ballet because I had to focus on my own field. But once you secure your own…

— Marina Abramovic

Dance in the most perishable of the arts. Ballets are forgotten, ballerinas retire, choreographers die--and what remains of that glorious production which so excited…

— Jack Anderson

“The very essence of ballet is poetic, deriving from dreams rather than from reality. About the only reason for its existence is to enable…

— Théophile Gautier

Dance in this century has remained primarily a personal ritual operating, like most avant-garde art, as an idiosyncratic form rather than a tribal expression…

— Jamake Highwater

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

— George Balanchine

Ballet is a closed world and very rigid; MGM was a fairyland. You'd walk down the lot, seeing all these fabulous movies being made…

— Cyd Charisse

Now there is in a way a renaissance of modern dance - suddenly, it is more respected and discovered.

— Mikhail Baryshnikov

Ballet is an incredibly difficult, beautiful art form that takes a lot of training, a lot of time, and a lot of hard work.

— Sutton Foster

I think American Ballet Theatre is setting that standard now for classical ballet, that you can dream big, and it doesn't matter what you…

— Misty Copeland