“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.”

French ballet dancer

Sylvie Guillem is a French ballet dancer, best known for her career with the Paris Opera Ballet and later as a principal guest artist with the Royal Ballet in London. She was born in 1965. From 1984 to 1989, Guillem was the top-ranking female dancer at the Paris Opera Ballet. She later expanded into contemporary dance as an Associate Artist of Sadler's Wells Theatre in London. Among her best-known performances are Giselle and Rudolf Nureyev's stagings of Swan Lake and Don Quixote. In November 2014, she announced that she would retire from the stage in 2015.