My reputation precedes me all the time, but I'm not the monster people think I am.
— Sylvie Guillem
I like creation even if it is a bit difficult. It is always very exciting.
To be free on stage, you need to have been disciplined.
When I was doing gymnastics, I was playing. It was fun. The ballet was not fun at all. Yes, I agree you must have discipline, but you don't need to be a witch. You can't teach a child like that. Three times a week, I went back to train as a gymnast. Then I was happy.
Working with a new style of choreography is always a period of adaptation.
It's true I have a side of me that isn't very adult. I can get very emotional about things. I can become crazy, act the clown.
As a child, I was afraid of everything. My parents were shy, the kind of people for whom it is an ordeal to go and buy some bread or whatever.
It is strange: I love to be in front of the audience, but I have this opposite side that is afraid of meeting people, that doesn't want to talk. I feel it's like having a little hard stone inside me of problems, doubts, and shyness.
I am only interested in being famous for my dancing. For me, the concept of the sacred monster is only about the stage - it is not about image.
A performance is like a boat. You really want it to arrive at port. So when something goes wrong and it doesn't get there, that touches me a lot.
There is a false idea that I am stubborn and do only what I want, but really, I am like a sponge.
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.
I think it's going to be the most difficult thing to do, to leave the stage. But if you have no lucidity about it, it's even worse because you don't see the negative side of you still being onstage.
I had no sense of having reached some goal because I was an etoile at the Paris Opera. My ambition, if you can call it that, was to discover and learn and be excited by what I was doing. If I didn't have that, I would find it elsewhere.
While I enjoy it, I will continue to go onstage. While I contribute something, fine. I don't want to be dragging my feet. I don't want to become pathetic, but I think I will be lucid enough. I'll know when to stop.
People thought I had no feelings, that I was hard. But really, I was extremely sensitive to everything.
I like creation even if the process is always a bit difficult.
'Romeo and Juliet,' 'Manon,' 'Giselle' - they are not stupid stories. They have fantastic characters. They have a big package of emotion.
If an idea comes and I am attracted to it, I will do it.
I am very interested in nature.
I had never a thought of training to be a ballerina. I was a normal child. I never dreamed of the tutu.
I've learned to listen to what's going on with my body.
If we keep on destroying fish, there won't be any left. If the oceans die, we all die. It's as simple as that.
The best times are when the time on stage becomes much slower and the movement much bigger - in that case, everything seems to flow. This state does not happen very often, but when it does, it is a magic kind of pleasure.
I'm not the kind of person who is on television and in magazines every five minutes selling clothes or washing machines.
I was afraid when I came to the Royal Ballet that it would be easy to have everyone walking all over me if I didn't stick up for myself.
I can't have friends in every port. I have to work very hard and be very clear about what I want to do. I cannot just swallow everything I am told. I have to decide what I want to become part of my luggage - and what I don't.
At the Paris Opera Ballet, they were always making choices for me.
The problems I had with the Paris Opera Ballet are a thing of the past.
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.
I am not nice. That has gotten me into a lot of trouble.
Most producers who want you to dance are not looking at the long term. They see their evenings, the box office, whom they have to repay, whatever.
When you start, you have no brain; you are a kid. It's fine. But then I started to be scared. I was scared of judgment - not as a dancer, but as a person - and I was really uncomfortable with people. And it lasted for a very long time.
Dance should touch people.
I cannot stand unfairness.
Things that make me angry and sad, I cannot hide. It's not because I want to be a rebel; it's my instinct. When something touches me deeply, I really have to react.
I don't think you can ever leave the stage easily.
When a real artist creates something, it has to be a necessity, the only way he can say something.
When you do one more 'Cinderella' or whatever, what is there to learn? Every part in the repertoire has a good side and a bad side, and the more often you do the same ballet, the more often the bad side comes out. If you want to give dance life, you must give it fresh food, not keep going back to the garbage to look for old scraps.
It would be nice to wake up and be able to walk to the bathroom. But even when I was 20 and at the Paris Opera, I had to crawl down the stairs; it is only when I start to work and stretch that my body begins to recover again.
If I am out in the street or buying bread or taking a taxi, no one knows who I am.
Some choreographers have been cautious about working with me.
It is in my nature to be a little shy. It takes time for me to talk to people and trust them.
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.
The Palais Garnier was part of my childhood, my pseudo-adolescence, my life.
There's a picture of me as a little girl, and I'm waiting to go onstage, and I am biting the last bit of nail I have left on my finger.
I judge myself severely.
One has to learn to say, 'Wait, there is a pain that is not logical. I will do a scan, and if there is something serious, I will stop immediately.' If the body sends a message, you have to listen to it.
I do not want an animal to die for me.
