Someone once said that dancers work just as hard as policeman, always alert, always tense. But I don't agree with that because policeman don't have to look beautiful at the same 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.

I cannot move, I cannot even want to move, unless I hear the music first.

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.

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

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.

The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.