I think all dancers are control freaks a bit. We just want to be in control of ourselves and our bodies. That's just what the ballet structure, I think, kind of puts inside of you.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
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.
The discipline that ballet requires is obsessive. And only the ones who dedicate their whole lives are able to make it. Your toenails fall off and you peel them away and then you're asked to dance again and keep smiling. I wanted to become a professional ballet dancer.
I find that dancers are only well trained in ballet these days.
I think body-image issues are not just a dancer thing. I think we're much more in tune and aware because the body is our instrument and art, and we stare at ourselves in a mirror all day, but I feel like it's something that every woman experiences and every girl experiences.
Modern dancers should be doing things no one else is doing, and it should come from the gut.
One of our problems is our sense of discipline - dancers have an extraordinary sense of self-discipline.
I'm pretty gutsy. Dancers don't think about things; they just do them.
Dancers work and they work and they work, and they master their skills so far that improvisation just comes flowing out of them. Their natural expression of the best they can possibly be comes out of them because there is no boundary to hold them back... That's the mentality that I'm trying to create, recreate and hold on to forever.
I realize that dancers have worked long and hard for standards. However, on occasion, I think that it's good to examine one's heart and ask why are we dancing.
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.