“In the same way the lifted leg of an arabesque becomes a wing, and not a mechanical leverage like a raised trap door.”

To make up a dance, I still need, as I needed then, a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea.

We can’t stand silence, because silence includes thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.

Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.

great artists can be uncertain. Of course they are while strugggling to find solutions.

I want one word on my tombstone – dancer.

The acrobat is lost in a web of muscles the dancer is all but invisible in projected idea.

Dancers don’t get invited to visit people. It is assumed a boy dancer will run off with the spoons and a girl with the head of the house.

I learned three important things in college-to use a library, to memorize quickly and visually, to drop asleep at any time given a horizontal surface and fifteen minutes.

So that we will miss nothing. Partly it’s greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.

Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible

But all of these knew very well what they did not want, and what they did not want was the current coin, the well-worn usage.

A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.

One of the good things about my having some recognition is that I can do something for the people

We have the most varied and imaginative bathrooms in the world, we have kitchens with the most gimmicks, we have houses with every possible electrical gadget to save ourselves all kinds of trouble – all so that we can have leisure. Leisure, leisure, leisure!

When I dance I am really meditating rather then performing for an audience.

So that we don’t go mad in the leisure, we have color TV. So that there will never, never, be a moment of silence, we have radio and Muzak.