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via:mariadoval
“I don’t want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance.”
– George Balanchine
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Paris Opera ballet dancer
Renaissance rehearsal in Balmain costumes
photo: Luc Braquet
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Olga Smirnova and Karim Abdullin in ‘Emeralds’.
The Australian Ballet
Amber Scott. Photography Justin Ridler
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Balmain, Opéra de Paris
Photo © Gerard Uferas
“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.”
– LINCOLN KIRSTEIN, Four Centuries of Ballet
![](https://68.media.tumblr.com/06769ce3ac1684b6aaa641d0e59ab725/tumblr_n2j33sxzrK1ttt7wvo2_250.gif)
Olga Smirnova and Karim Abdullin in ‘Emeralds’.
Svetlana Zakharova and Andrei Merkuriev rehearsing Edward Liang’s “Distant Cries”
Photo: Maria- Helena Buckley
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Paris Opera Ballet
Renaissance rehearsal in Balmain costumes
photo: Luc Braquet
Marianela Nunez and Federico Bonelli in rehearsal for “Carmen”, The Royal Ballet
Photography: Andrej Uspensky
Paris Opera Ballet
Renaissance rehearsal in Balmain costumes
photo: Luc Braquet
![](https://68.media.tumblr.com/f78872d06503cb1667539d742841439c/tumblr_n2j33sxzrK1ttt7wvo1_250.gif)
Olga Smirnova and Karim Abdullin in ‘Emeralds’.
Chopiniana, Polish National Ballet
Photo by Remy Lamping
Paris Opera Ballet Dancer
Renaissance rehearsal in Balmain costumes
photo: Luc Braquet
![](https://68.media.tumblr.com/3af36b88df354f37889556bb68fb5ba7/tumblr_n2j33sxzrK1ttt7wvo3_250.gif)
Olga Smirnova and Karim Abdullin in ‘Emeralds’.
Balmain, Opéra de Paris
Photo © Gerard Uferas
“What’s so wonderful about ballet is that it’s mind-driven physicality.
It’s almost a Greek ideal of body, mind, and form.”
– Edward Villella