All the children in the school should learn the steps of everything, before they learn the thing, then they know which step they're doing better, because your voice is in certain steps and has to do most of the things that have been composed in those steps.
Ninette de Valois
2
Also, if you have an accident, you can't start to dance again at the top, you're too weak; you start with the easy things - the way you did them when you were young, and come up up up, the way you did then.
Ninette de Valois
3
As time goes on, all schools only get left alive if they have found something special themselves.
Ninette de Valois
Exactly the same with dancing, you can't dance until you've learnt steps, the things your feet can do.
Ninette de Valois
6
First of all, the most important, that is to learn everything good that has survived from other times, and carefully to watch the bad - and throw it out.
Ninette de Valois
7
God gave us all exactly the same fingers, arms, legs, and feet, but in our different countries we divided them all a little differently as we feel it, do you understand?
Ninette de Valois
8
Hardly any generation wants to take the whole of the last generation, it just wants to take its best bits.
Ninette de Valois
9
It's either not good enough and dies altogether, or it develops.
Ninette de Valois
10
It's like the voice. We don't force a voice which we decide is lower than a lot of others, we teach it to sing in what we call their key, don't we?
Ninette de Valois
11
Nearly everything in life goes in threes and fours.
Ninette de Valois
12
No no, we ALL teach each other, whether it's dancing, whether it's singing, whether it's talking, we all listen to each other. That's progress.
Ninette de Valois
13
Oh yes, after the war, and we were all starving - we had no proper food or anything - no proper shoes.
Ninette de Valois
14
There would never have been a British Ballet without Diaghilev. He had a wonderful influence.
Ninette de Valois
15
There's nothing in the world that isn't good, bad, and indifferent.
Ninette de Valois
16
Well it, nothing is done easily, you first have the thing, then the thing has a success, then all sorts of difficulties arise through the success.
Ninette de Valois
17
Well, I mean, we are developing the other parts, and we can't give quite all our attention to the upper part, but soon the lower parts will be developed, and the upper part and the lower part will become partners, that will be wonderful.
Ninette de Valois
18
You can't expect the press to stand still and not to want to change their minds, and develop something you and I haven't noticed.
Ninette de Valois
