Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.

Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.

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

There is a force, a quickness that is translated through you into action. If you block it, the world will not have it.

Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart. The instrument through which the dance speaks is also the instrument through which life is lived ... the human body.

The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.

A dancer, more than any other human being, dies two deaths: the first, the physical when the powerfully trained body will no longer respond as you would wish. After all, I choreographed for myself. I never choreographed what I could not do. I changed steps in Medea and other ballets to accommodate the change. But I knew. And it haunted me. I only wanted to dance.