Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for -- liberation.

Theater used to be a verb; it used to be an act. But nowadays it is just a noun. It is a place.

I don't try to tell the dancers exactly what a dance means before they do it.

I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable.

I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

I use the words gods and goddesses principally, I think, to mean beautiful bodies - bodies that are absolute instruments. And I believe in discipline, I believe in a very definite technique.

Pity is a corroding thing.