George Balanchine: I am a Cloud in Trousers

“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.”
- George Balanchine

“Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays.”
- George Balanchine

“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.”
- George Balanchine

“One is born to be a dancer. No teacher can work miracles, nor will years of training make a good dancer of an untalented pupil. One may be able to acquire a certain technical facility, but no one can ever 'acquire an exceptional talent.' I have never prided myself on having an unusually gifted pupil. A Pavlova is no one's pupil but God's.”
- George Balanchine

“We must first realize that dancing is an absolutely independent art, not merely a secondary accompanying one. I believe that it is one of the great arts. . . . The important thing in ballet is the movement itself. A ballet may contain a story, but the visual spectacle . . . is the essential element. 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.”
- George Balanchine

“I don't want people who want to dance; I want people who have to dance.”
- George Balanchine

“The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.”
- George Balanchine

“I cannot move, I cannot even want to move, unless I hear the music first.”
- George Balanchine

“I've got more energy now than when I was younger because I know exactly what I want to do.”
- George Balanchine

“Ballet dancing is arduous, strenuous activity. Students are engaged in physical training that rivals the training Olympic athletes undergo. At the same time, they strive for physical perfection not for the prowess alone but as a way of achieving the means necessary to express the pure nature of their art.”
-- George Balanchine

“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.”
- 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. We exist in time.”
-- George Balanchine

“What are you waiting for? What are you saving for? Now is all there is.”
- George Balanchine

“Dance is music made visible.”
- George Balanchine

“Put a man and a girl on stage and there is already a story; a man and two girls, there's already a plot.”
- George Balanchine

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

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

“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.”
- George Balanchine

“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?”
- George Balanchine

“It's like the time capsule with everything in it. Or like the seed that when you plant it, becomes the enormous tree with leaves and fruit. Everybody was in that little seed, and so everything can open. The tree of dance is like that. It just takes a long, long time to blossom.”
- George Balanchine

“I am a cloud - in trousers.”
- George Balanchine

“They are poets of gesture.”
- George Balanchine

“In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell ... we can't dance synonyms.”
- 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 audience, 
much as it is with the work of a magician”
- George Balanchine

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

“First comes the sweat. Then comes the beauty if you're very lucky and have said your prayers.”
- George Balanchine

“Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned.”
- George Balanchine

“The pointes for girls, I always say, have to be like an elephant's trunk; strong and yet flexible and soft.”
- George Balanchine

“See the music, hear the dance.”
- George Balanchine

“Ballet will speak for itself. About itself.”
- George Balanchine

“My muse must come to me on union time.”
- George Balanchine

“One is born to be a great dancer.”
- George Balanchine