Ballet dancers are a self-chosen elite. To survive and surmount years of disciplinary preparation and seasons of even … - Lincoln Kirstein

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Although the season is joyful everywhere, <br> And mountain and valley are all verdant, <br> That would seem a truly small matter to him <br> Who has met mischance in love.

Lincoln Kirstein

Ballet dancers are a self-chosen elite. To survive and surmount years of disciplinary preparation and seasons of even more arduous performance requires rigid determination and almost mindless self-abnegation. One other factor is difficult to predetermine: without a certain admixture of hysteria - sometimes masking as self-obsession, sometimes even counterfeiting incipient madness - performers, at once acrobats, artists, and animals, make little public impression.

Admixture, Artist, Dance, Determination, Difficult, Masking

Same Author Quotes

In liberal democracy and anxious anarchy, the traditional classic dance, compact of aristocratic authority and absolute freedom in a necessity of order, has never been so promising as an independent expression as it is today.

Absolute, Expression, Independent, Necessity, Order

She was chronologically in luck. She corresponded to necessity.

Chronologically, Corresponded, Luck, Necessity

The domain of the ballet dancer is not earth but air.

Air, Ballet, Dancer, Earth

Dance design is not simply one element; it is that without which ballet cannot exist. As aria is to opera, words to poetry, color to painting, so sequence in steps - their syntax, idiom, vocabulary - are the stuff of stage dancing.

Color, Dance, Sequence, Vocabulary

Transplanting the ballet to the United States is like trying to raise a palm tree in Dakota.

Ballet, Inspirational, Palm, Raise, Transplanting, Tree