106 Quotes by Sylvie Guillem

Between what I know I can do and want to achieve and what the audience expects, it's a lot of pressure, and it's always adding up.

The Palais Garnier was part of my childhood, my pseudo-adolescence, my life.

On stage, you can bring all those strong emotions that you don't have the opportunity to live. You don't want to die for love every day, but on stage, you can.

Dancers, you know, they have pain everywhere: ankles in the morning, or back or neck or ribs or knees or the muscles. You are never free of pain, you know.

The problems I had with the Paris Opera Ballet are a thing of the past.

The first time I took a plane to dance in front of an audience outside France was when I was in the Paris Opera Ballet School, and we flew to Japan.

I have learned a great deal from the theatrical side of Covent Garden. The Paris Opera Ballet is more concerned with technique. It's perfect. It's beautiful. It's well done. But it lacks the theatrical tradition that is so important in England. At the Royal Ballet, absolutely everyone on stage seems to be caught up in the plot.

Dancing pleases me. I hope I transmit that to others.

There are some ballets you can do for a long time. With others, you have to know when to stop. Some are very destructive. Forsythe's choreography pushes dancers to the extreme. That's why it's best to vary. That way, you break your body a little bit in different places, but not a lot in one place.