Parenting & Family Quote by Ninette de Valois

De Valois is smuggling a whole pedagogy into that breathless, looping sentence: technique first, inspiration second, and not because she distrusts art, but because she distrusts vagueness. In ballet, “steps” aren’t just choreography; they’re the grammar that makes expression legible. Her insistence that children “learn the steps of everything, before they learn the thing” is a rebuke to the romantic myth that feeling alone can carry you. Feeling, in her view, needs infrastructure.

The intriguing pivot is the voice. A dancer talking about “your voice” signals a modern idea of artistry - individuality - but she roots it in something almost unsexy: keys, modes, counts, structures. “Certain steps” reads like musical steps as much as dance steps, hinting at the intimate tether between movement and composition. If you don’t know the framework the music is built on, you can’t reliably find where your own emphasis belongs. Your “voice” isn’t a mystical essence; it’s a set of choices made inside constraints you actually understand.

Context matters: de Valois wasn’t merely a performer; she was a builder of institutions and standards, helping professionalize British ballet. This is founder logic. Teach the system early so dancers can self-diagnose (“which step they’re doing better”), develop faster, and eventually interpret with authority instead of imitation. The subtext is practical and slightly authoritarian: freedom is earned, not bestowed, and the shortest route to “expression” is a ruthless fluency in the basics.