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" 'The Sleeping Beauty' is the greatest, most challenging and most vulnerable of classical ballets. Everything can go wrong with it, and all too often, everything does. "

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" Ballet companies have their ups and downs, just like the rest of us. "

" I hated Matthew Bourne's 'Swan Lake' when it first turned up, and then when it was televised, and then when it returned. "

" Writing happened to me. I didn't decide to start writing or to be a writer. I never wanted to be a writer. "

" If Tom Clancy didn't write any Op-Centers, he would be $60 million less rich. "

" What really matters is that 'Black Swan' deploys and exaggerates all the cliches of earlier ballet movies, especially 'The Red Shoes,' another tale of a ballerina driven mad and suicidal. "

" We know that Diana Vishneva is a phenomenon of strength and style, and she certainly has earned the right to stretch her talents as best she can. "

" Editing is simply the application of the common sense of any good reader. That's why, to be an editor, you have to be a reader. It's the number one qualification. "

" In today's world, it never looks good when you're suing somebody who earned $20,000 for writing a book over a period of a year or two. "

" Ballet in September used to be dead as a dodo. Now, with City Ballet's ingenious decision to give us four weeks of repertory in the early fall, having cut down on the relentlessly long spring season when dancers, critics and audiences droop on the vine, we wake up after the dog days of August with something to look at. "

" Choreographers, historically, are born, not made - their talents drive them to it. "

" Tolstoy may be right about happy and unhappy families, but in ballet, it works the opposite way: All good ballets are different from each other and all bad ones are alike, at least in one crucial respect - they're all empty. "

" Martha Graham, along with George Balanchine, is one of the two commanding figures in 20th-century American dance. For those much younger than I am, her genius as a performer will have to be taken on faith - and on the always-suspect evidence of film. What will last, if things go well, is her genius as a choreographer, as a woman of the theater. "

" Remember: TV is a format, film is a format, and books are a format. "

" As ye sow, so shall ye reap. When a ballet company spends a lot of money on gimmicky pieces, it's stuck with them for a while - they have to earn their keep. "

" Twyla Tharp is not going to take orders from anyone, not even Mozart! "

" Diana Vishneva is not only a magnificent dancer but a magnificent actress - no one works harder or understands more. "

Robert Gottlieb

Magnificent

Harder

" Soledad Barrio is clearly a master - of thrilling steps and passionate movement. She stalks, she circles, she struts, she snaps her head - her feet drill the stage. "

" 'Ocean's Kingdom' is a fairy story with no subtext, no resonance - it's not about anything except its water-logged plot. "

" Why movie and dance critics are taking 'The Company' seriously, I can't imagine. Are they impressed by Altman's reputation and naive sincerity? By the fluid semi-documentary approach? "

" For Russians, to whom Pushkin's poem 'Eugene Onegin' is sacred text, the ballet's story and personae are as familiar and filled with meaning as, for instance, 'Romeo' and 'Hamlet' are for us. Russians know whole stretches of it by heart, the way we know Shakespeare and Italians know Dante. "

" Charles Dickens left us fifteen novels, and in an ideal world, everyone would read all of them. "

Robert Gottlieb

Ideal

World

" Editing requires you to be always open, always responding. It is very important, for example, not to allow yourself to want the writer to write a certain kind of book. Sometimes that's hard. "

" Most famous stage actors tactfully fade away. "

" Ballet Hispanico is far from Irish, and, though it has strong dancers, its Spanishness has always left me unconvinced. "

Robert Gottlieb

Far

Dancers

" Has there ever been a dance career with more ups and downs than Twyla Tharp's? Or with more varied ambitions? Or larger ambition? "

" The early giants of modern dance - Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis - barely left traces of their art. "

" 'Eclipse' is overlong and overly self-conscious, but it isn't a fake or a zero; it just gets exhausting. It raises a crucial question: 'When does Concept morph into Gimmick?' "

" Many people say to me, particularly about my dance writing, 'It sounds just like you.' But it sounds just like me after I've made it sound like me. "

Robert Gottlieb

People

Dance

" Dance Theatre of Harlem has done a lot of good things well, a lot of good things badly, and a lot of bad things - it doesn't matter how. "

" Nothing is harder to create than brilliant comic ballets, except maybe brilliant full-evening comic ballets. "