44 Quotes by Ninette de Valois

It's either not good enough and dies altogether, or it develops.

Oh yes, technique has definitely advanced. But you never advance without losing something en passant, and you lose it because you're paying so much attention to the new thing.

Somebody must always be doing something new, or life would get very dull.

The best way to study is to go to the Cecchetti method for about a year and draw onto all the highest points and then put that into the general method.

There would never have been a British Ballet without Diaghilev. He had a wonderful influence

Hardly any generation wants to take the whole of the last generation, it just wants to take its best bits.

And then you have the classical ballerinas, they're like sopranos. Applied to the dance.

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.

Exactly the same with dancing, you can't dance until you've learnt steps, the things your feet can do.