Life
“We worship perfection; it’s what we chase. But sometimes, perfect isn’t what we want, and it can make us selfish and let people down.” – Tara Webster
“True beauty is in the imperfections.” – Mrs. Webster
“Sometimes the things you commit to aren’t going to please everyone. Putting yourself on the line comes at a cost. But if you want to be the best, sacrifices have to be made. Maybe not all at once.” – Tara Webster
“100% focus demands 100% commitment, and that means some things have to be sacrificed.” – Tara Webster
“Here is a whole other planet; one minute you think you know your way around, the next you know you’re in a minefield. Everywhere you look is a new trap, another enemy, danger around every corner. Just when you think it’s game over, the universe gives you a bonus.” – Tara Webster
“Growing up, I had my mom and dad to give me the warning signs; here, we have to rely on each other, trust that we won’t let one another down, agree to disagree.” – Tara Webster
“The thing about being at the bottom is there is nowhere else to go but the top.” – Tara Webster
“No matter where you are, even if it’s a thousand miles away from home, you’ll always be who you are, and that’s a good thing.” – Tara Webster
“I’m scared that if I start crying, I’m not gonna be able to stop.” – Tara Webster
“I don’t know why I do it, why I mess up what I want the most. I need to learn to be brave, to stand up and say what I want, even if it is just admitting it to myself, because that’s the only way I’m ever going to get it.” – Tara Webster
“I want my future to find me, not my past.” – Christian Reed
“I used to have posters of my favorite dancers all over my bedroom walls; I studied them for hours. I thought I knew them, like they were my friends, only more perfect. Then, I came to the Academy and met some of my idols in real life. It’s only up close that you realize they’re just people, which isn’t so bad either, because if they’re human, there’s the slightest chance you might grow up to be on a poster, too.” – Tara Webster
“If you waste too much time blaming the world, the world wins.” – Ben Tickle
“Sometimes there’s nothing left to say. You only want to be left alone, and the only person you want to hear from is silent.” – Tara Webster
“I had a recurring dream where I am about to take the biggest exam of my life. I open the booklet and realize I can’t answer a single question. All this time I’ve been studying the wrong subject. It’s like the whole time I had been on track and knew what I was doing, but I hadn’t learned anything at all.” – Sammy Lieberman
“I don’t know why we have to pretend we don’t care about not winning. We should get to celebrate the victories and be disappointed when you lose something that matters, because it’s honest, and then you can move on, realizing that no win can feel avoided and no loss can hurt you, unless you let it.” – Tara Webster
“I fought with Dad to stay here and be a dancer, which is the right decision, for now. As for the future, who knows? I mean, I might want to be a doctor. I might be straight; I might be gay. It’s awesome not knowing what the future holds, you know? The possibilities are unlimited. The world is my oyster, and I don’t even like shellfish.” – Sammy Lieberman
“They say the second before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. I hope so much that it’s true, that you get a photo album of every moment, so you know you were here, that you were loved, that you existed. You must need that second to prepare, because you don’t think, ‘At least my friend didn’t think he was going to die,’ so that one second between life and death was all the time he got to say goodbye. I don’t know how to breathe properly now that my friend is gone. I want to kick and scream and take it back, give anything for this awful emptiness to go away, and more than anything, I don’t want to say goodbye, so I won’t. I’ll just say thank you, that I knew him. There’s no need to say goodbye, when you’ll remember forever.” – Tara Webster
“The key to happiness is having something to do, something to love and something to dream about.” – Tara Webster
“Today I don’t have to be perfect; I just have to be me.” – Abigail Armstrong
“You can tell everything about someone by their feet, how they stand in the world, how grounded they are, how they dance.” – Petra Hoffman
“You know what the really sad thing is? If you put this same amount of effort into ballet as you do in being mean, you’d be a much better dancer.” – Petra Hoffman
“Everyone cares about being the best.” – Abigail Armstrong
“I’m not a bitch; I’m ambitious. There’s a difference.” – Abigail Armstrong
“You know, I want to do well, too. I just don’t think there’s any point killing ourselves in the process.” – Sammy Lieberman
“If you cry, it’s real, and if it’s real, he’s gone.” – Abigail Armstrong
“We’ll take it slow. We’ll figure it out together.”
“I may not be the girl who dreams of flying anymore. She crashed too many times, hit the ground too hard. Now I dance with my feet on the ground and my eyes open, which means I appreciate this adventure that I’m on. This adventure requires faith; it requires humility and always love.”
Love
“I broke up with Ollie. Yeah, that was a learning experience, and I mean, I was so convinced it wouldn’t work in the end because I had issues with the whole dating a guy thing, but ultimately that wasn’t the factor. It was him, and it made it even more obvious that the gender thing is irrelevant to me. I’ll probably date another guy again, but it’s hard because I haven’t connected with anyone like how I connected with Abigail, so I’m not ruling anything out just yet.” – Sammy Lieberman
“Stop lying to yourself and admit that you’re in love with someone who doesn’t love you back. Trust me, it’s character-building.” – Kat Karamakov
“As dancers we learn to be in control of our bodies down to the last millimeter, because if even one finger is out of alignment it all falls apart, so you practice movements until they’re perfect. You learn to control gravity, to control pain, and refuse to let yourself get away with anything, but there’s one thing that doesn’t follow the rules, that you wish you could control but can’t – your heart.” – Tara Webster
“When you’re kissing the right person, it’s always simple.” – Christian Reed
“That’s okay. Romeo and Juliet weren’t friends.” – Christian Reed
“He wants everything. He wants Tink because she’s awesome, but I think, deep down, Peter loves Wendy. She challenges him to be better than he is, you know? But he’s scared of that, so he gives her up, kind of makes him a sellout.” – Christian Reed
“I don’t think I’m ever gonna love anyone the way I love you.” – Christian Reed
“And I know that’s stupid and we probably wouldn’t have ended up together, but I loved him.” – Abigail Armstrong
Dance
“Pas de deux, two bodies, one soul. A guy and a girl dancing together to produce one emotion.”
“The first rule of ballet is to make every single movement as beautiful as possible, but sometimes breaking the rules is the only way of getting it right. And once they’re broken, you can start making your own. It’s not ballet. It’s something new.” – Tara Webster
“In ballet, you always know where the step is; the rules haven’t changed for the past hundred years. But things can’t stay the same forever; we all have to learn new tricks even when every fiber of our body is against it.” – Tara Webster
“Hip-Hop is not about steps, and it’s not about technique. I don’t want you to be perfect; I want you to be real.”
“Wanting to dance isn’t enough to make you dancers. Get your head out of the clouds and start thinking critically. You have to face your physical limitation; not everyone is meant to be a dancer. Prepare yourself for a lifetime of hard work, sacrifice and more often than not – disappointment.” – Lucy Raine
“Every dancer knows that being technically perfect isn’t good enough. We need to know why we dance. For me, it’s to be connected. I’m inspired by my friends.” – Sammy Lieberman
“Back in Hatchie, every boy played football, even though the local team hadn’t won since color TV was invented. Every Saturday, people drove 500K’s to watch them lose, except me. I was too busy dancing. It made to sense, everyone fighting over a ball. Why didn’t they just get their own?” – Tara Webster
“Abigail, you’re a smart dancer. You know there are certain limitations to your technique. I had them, too. Others have more natural potential. We have to work the best of our ability, which you have been doing.” – Lucy Raine
“Abigail, sometimes ballet can be as unfair as it is unforgiving, but in my experience, hard work can overcome most obstacles.” – Lucy Raine
“Before I left home, Mom gave me the talk, not that talk. She was worried one day I’d regret missing out on being an ordinary teenager. I told her point blank that there wasn’t any choice, because who wants to be ordinary when you have the chance of becoming a professional dancer?” – Tara Webster
“Ballet is the closest thing to flying.”
“I always knew that in another life I could fly, which is why in this life I dance.”
“Being a dancer means you dance when you’re in pain. You dance when your heart’s breaking.” – Tara Webster
“I cannot adequately describe the way dance makes me feel. It is as though I had somehow found a way to sever the chords holding me to this earth, and for a moment, if only a fraction of a second, I can fly.”