Mikhail Baryshnikov Dance Quotations

You cannot dance physically certain things. But look at tango dancers or flamenco or Japanese classical theater. You can, if you're smart enough and you collaborate with the right choreographers, you could really dance your age.

I never liked dance photography; it's very flat, and dance photography in the studio looks very contrived.

Every ballet, whether or not successful artistically or with the public, has given me something important.

I like the most provocative and most surprising partnerships on stage. Intensity and surprise.

I would like to go and dance in Palestine one day, with great pleasure, great pleasure.

I don't try to dance better than anybody but myself.

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

Obviously, the young dancers lack a certain air of maturity.

I have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer's work is.

Nothing is ever too expensive if it furthers the repertoire and artistic standards of a dance company.

It's weird when you see pieces of choreography that were done for you 15 or 20 years ago and now they are being done by another dance company.

You can be totally involved, you could admire just the shape of or you could be totally emotionally mushed up into the dance.

What brought me to the theater, no matter you're a Jew or a Russian or Armenian or Latvian, are suddenly illuminated by stage light and one beautiful image of dance.

You see, dancers are quite mature people because they start performing so early. They become professionals when they start to take everyday classes.

I kind of lost interest in the classical dance. I was very much interested in the modern choreography.

People dance at any age.

Dancers are stripped enough onstage. You don't have to know more about them than they've given you already.

If your only dance experience is the Nutcracker, it will be a shock; hopefully shocking in a good way.

To achieve some depth in your field requires a lot of sacrifices.

Nobody is born a dancer.

I want to see people dance, and I would like to guess what kind of people they are. I don't want to know the recipe for their pasta.

The problem is not making up the steps but deciding which ones to keep.

Just sit and open your eyes and open your heart. It's dance theater.

I am not the first straight dancer or the last.

We're trying to stretch our muscles creatively. It gives us so much more freedom.

No one is born a dancer. You have to want it more than anything.

It doesn't matter how high you lift your leg. The technique is about transparency, simplicity, making an earnest attempt.

There comes a moment in a young artist's life when he knows he has to bring something to the stage from within himself. He has to put in something in order to be able to take something.

No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.

The more injuries you get, the smarter you get.

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.

When a dancer comes onstage, he is not just a blank slate that the choreographer has written on. Behind him he has all the decisions he has made in life Each time, he has chosen, and in what he is onstage, you see the result of those choices. You are looking at the person he is, and the person who, at this point, he cannot help but be Exceptional dancers, in my experience, are also exceptional people, people with an attitude toward life, a kind of quest, and an internal quality. They know who they are, and they show this to you, willingly.

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to to dance better than myself.

The body cannot lie. You cannot be somebody else onstage, no matter how good of an actor or dancer or singer you are. When you open your arms, move your finger, the audience knows who you are, you know.