Ninette de Valois Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“First of all, the most important, that is to learn everything good that has survived from other times, and carefully to watch the bad - and throw it out.”

“The best way to study is to go to the Cecchetti method for about a year and draw onto all the highest points and then put that into the general method.”

“Oh yes, after the war, and we were all starving - we had no proper food or anything - no proper shoes.”

“So it takes years to make a solid company.”

“Also, if you have an accident, you can't start to dance again at the top, you're too weak; you start with the easy things - the way you did them when you were young, and come up up up, the way you did then.”

“As time goes on, all schools only get left alive if they have found something special themselves.”

“Hardly any generation wants to take the whole of the last generation, it just wants to take its best bits.”

“God gave us all exactly the same fingers, arms, legs, and feet, but in our different countries we divided them all a little differently as we feel it, do you understand?”

“Oh yes, technique has definitely advanced. But you never advance without losing something en passant, and you lose it because you're paying so much attention to the new thing.”

“You can't stop what comes into a country, you can be influenced, but you can't stop it, you shouldn't, because it makes all the others interesting, we all get muddled up together, and produce something that belongs to everyone.”