Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned.

My muse must come to me on union time.

See the music, hear the dance.

We must first realize that dancing is an absolutely independent art, not merely a secondary accompanying one. I believe that it is one of the great arts. . . . The important thing in ballet is the movement itself. A ballet may contain a story, but the visual spectacle . . . is the essential element. The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they reach the audience through the eye. It's the illusion created which convinces the audience, much as it is with the work of a magician.

The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener.

I have no literary approach - except to literature.

The woman's function is to fascinate men.