Suzanne Farrell Quotes

I'm thought of as a cool, unemotional dancer, but inside I'm not.

I loved tests because it was another form of competing, a healthy competition.

You're never more of an individual than when you're a happy team player.

I loved the stage not because it provided an escape from myself or my humdrum life but because when the curtain went up I could be whoever I wanted to be, and that was true freedom - to be myself.

Once I started dancing, I was not the spoiled brat or the rebellious child that I was as a child.

Fifth positions, heads, musicality, energy. Not technical things so much-getting your leg higher or doing more turns but things that would set you apart from other dancers. The only way you can be different is to be yourself if you don't find your spirit and reveal it, you just look like every other dancer.

The arts are the hospitals for our souls.

I set as my goal to be the best dancer I could be. Not the most famous, or the highest paid dancer, just the best I could be. Out of this discipline came great freedom and calm.

On the other hand, I think it is wonderful for everyone to take ballet classes, at any age. It gives you a discipline, it gives you a place to go. It gives you some control in your life.

As soon as I hear music, something in me starts to vibrate.

When you get on stage, you can be anything. You are removed from reality in a way, the real world.

After I stopped dancing, I was unable to listen to beautiful music.

When you are on stage in front of an audience, you want to engage the entire crowd. If a thousand people are in the theater, you need to dance a thousand different ways, not one-thousandth of a way.

I could work out a lot of my emotions by going to class and dancing.

Although we do come from a silent profession, it is important for us to verbalize what we want to say. (As I tell my students): you could love someone all your life, but if you never say it how are they going to know? There comes a point when you have to say what you mean, which makes you scream louder when you dance.

When you are on stage, you don't see faces. The lights are in your eyes and you see just this black void out in front of you. And yet you know there is life out there, and you have to get your message across.

It's ungrateful to be wishing you were doing something else at the moment you are living. You haven't lived in the moment that you are really living, you are wishing you were somewhere else.

I didn't have any doubts about my choice of career, but I had constant doubts about my ability, yes.

I didn't care too much for ballet, because you had to be more disciplined, and you sort of looked like everyone else. It required a certain kind of conformity that I didn't feel like I wanted to do.

Even though I am a professional, and I know what the steps are, I don't quite know how I'm going to do them, because I haven't lived that moment yet. I always feel very insecure and I get very excited.

In fact, ballet companies did not exist in the Midwest when I was a child.

And I just thought, this is what I want to be. And I knew that dancing would be my chosen profession.

You don't learn from a situation where you do something well. You enjoy it and you give yourself credit, but you don't really learn from that. You learn from trial and error, trial and error, all the time.

Treat each class as if it were your first.

That the work involved, the willingness to take chances, the commitment, the opportunity to get on stage and make people happy, was more important than becoming famous, or even what I was dancing.

I was very much of a tomboy.

There is pain and sacrifice in everyone's world. That's why, when I was dancing, I had no pain.

The particular ballet was not so important as the fact that I was physically healthy, and capable of getting out there and dancing as often as possible.

I used to love to play dress-up, where you get your mother's or your grandmother's dresses and high heels.

I had two sisters, and we would love to get dressed up and pretend that we were chic, sophisticated ladies. And I think that was a great sort of preparation, in a way.

I had a wonderful childhood, coming from Cincinnati, and I think that it was great going into the life that I was going to have, where you have to start young as a dancer.

I liked to read but, being a dancer, I didn't have a lot of time to read.

I liked tap, because I liked hearing the results of my movements.

Eating a healthy diet is not just about eating a few special foods. There's a bigger picture. You need to practice moderation, eat a variety of foods, and get enough physical activity.

So dancing was not something I had a great desire to do.

I think it was important that I learned to love to dance eventually for its own sake, as opposed to wanting to be a ballerina.

Dancers are a great breed of people. And they really want to dance so you don't have to beg them to work. However, dancers sometimes build walls around themselves because they are presenting themselves all the time: dancing is very much a confession.

I learned to love dance for its own sake.

Do not brood. It makes the moment you are living in unavailable for learning and life.

I was very happy that I was as normal as possible before I went into serious dance.

Of course, in the art class, I was the model.

I liked Latin, I like languages, I liked all the myths, and the Roman tales that we were required to translate in Latin, and all these interesting people who were never quite what they thought they would be or seemed to be.

But what was my motivation was music, and the fact that I love to move around. I'm always moving around.

Good theater should always send people away feeling changed.

The body can do amazing things in a situation when it is really called for.

I think especially in a world where you have so little say about what goes on in your life, or in the politics of the world around you, it is wonderful to go into that studio, and tell yourself what to do.