Things danced on the screen do not look the way they do on the stage. On the stage, dancing is three-dimensional, but a motion picture is two-dimensional.

I don't even want to discuss Flashdance. I'm no critic, but that's an interesting phenomenon, that picture.

For a ridiculous analogy, let's take Purple Rain. If you were to put Purple Rain and The Sound of Music on the desk of a producer, he or she would know that the majority of moviegoers would rather listen to Prince. Since they are in the business of making money, no one can blame them. But if it ever came to the decision of making a film like that I'd say, "No." They are very easy films to make, though. In Purple Rain there is nothing complex about the way that they dance. Or sing. It would be a bit boring for an adult to make that film. It just wouldn't test their métier.

Kids talk to me and say they want to do musicals again because they've studied the tapes of the old films. We didn't have that. We thought once we had made it, even on film, it was gone except for the archives.

I'd studied dance in Chicago every summer and taught it all winter, and I was well-rounded. I wasn't worried about getting a job on Broadway. In fact, I got one the first week.

I wanted to invent some kind of American dance that was danced to the music that I grew up on: Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart and Irving Berlin. So I evolved a style that certainly didn't catch on right away - but I had some good mentors in New York who encouraged me.

I didn't want to move or act like a rich man. I wanted to dance in a pair of jeans. I wanted to dance like the man in the streets.