Ninette de Valois
Ninette de Valois
Dame Ninette de Valois OM CH DBEwas an Anglo-Irish dancer, teacher, choreographer, and director of classical ballet. She began life in Ireland as Edris Stannus. Most notably, she danced professionally with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, later establishing the Royal Ballet, one of the foremost ballet companies of the 20th century and still one of the leading ballet companies in the world. She also established the Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Royal Ballet School. She is widely regarded as one of...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionDancer
Date of Birth6 June 1898
CountryIreland
There's nothing in the world that isn't good, bad, and indifferent.
All the children in the school should learn the steps of everything, before they learn the thing, then they know which step they're doing better, because your voice is in certain steps and has to do most of the things that have been composed in those steps.
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.
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.
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.
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?
We are developing the other parts, and we can't give quite all our attention to the upper part, but soon the lower parts will be developed, and the upper part and the lower part will become partners, that will be wonderful.
No no, we ALL teach each other, whether it's dancing, whether it's singing, whether it's talking, we all listen to each other. That's progress.
The smile is the dance of the face - the dance is the smile of the limbs.
Nothing is done easily, first have the thing, then the thing has a success, then all sorts of difficulties arise through the success.
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.
As time goes on, all schools only get left alive if they have found something special themselves.
You never advance without losing something en passant... you lose it because you're paying so much attention to the new thing.
Somebody must always be doing something new, or life would get very dull.