I have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer's work is.

I fell in love with New York. It was like every human being, like any relationship. When I was a young New Yorker, it was one city. When I was a grown man, it was another city. I worked with many dance organizations and many wonderful people. In the '90s, it became kind of a hard and unwelcoming city in many ways. It became conservative, like the whole country.

Just sit and open your eyes and open your heart. It's dance theater.

We lived, until I was 12 or so, in communal apartment with five different families and the same kitchen, in two little - my brother and me and my parents. It was hell, but it was a common thing. My father was not general or admiral, but he was colonel. He was teaching in military academy military topography.

I have some Russian friends. But probably only 10 percent. I don't hang out usually in the big Russian communities in Brooklyn and New Jersey.

I have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer's work is.

He is a male butterfly without the wings - the same kind of grace of a very young horse, so angular.