The real American type can never be a ballet dancer. The legs are too long, the body too supple and the spirit too free for this school of affected grace and toe walking.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I find that dancers are only well trained in ballet these days.
I've never danced professionally as a ballet dancer, but all of my training is ballet, and I am a Fosse dancer.
I heard a lot in school, 'You've got a really great talent, but there's no way you're going to be a dancer with that body.'
Ballet is completely unnatural to the body, just being turned-out... it's not the way your body is supposed to function, so you actually train your body to be a different structure than you were born with.
I never wanted to be a dancer. I was too big, I was too slow. I remember not liking it. Later on, when I came to the United States, I realized I had a skill, and when you come to this country, you realize if you have a skill and a determination, you can do anything.
Most dancers have no awareness of how they look; half of them think they're fat. There is anorexia in the ballet world; there are those things.
It'd be very difficult to cast me as a ballet dancer. Everybody is, in some sense, controlled by their size and their gender. I'm not going to be allowed to play the part that Denzel Washington plays.
Kids are always told that they can be anything that they want. But what if you want to be a ballerina, and you're terrible at ballet? Or what if you're gifted at ballet, but you don't like doing it?
I copied my brother. He was a natural dancer. Graceful. People always asked did we study ballet. We never did.
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 look like, where you come from, what your background is.