I don't have a past. I have a continuous present. The past is part of the present, just as the future is. We exist in time.

Why are you stingy with yourselves? Why are you holding back? What are you saving for - for another time? There are no other times. There is only now. Right now.

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.

Dance is music made visible

I don't want people who want to dance; I want people who have to dance.

Put a man and a girl on stage and there is already a story; a man and two girls, there's already a plot.

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