We're trying to stretch our muscles creatively. It gives us so much more freedom.

I like the most provocative and most surprising partnerships on stage. Intensity and surprise.

Dances have a second and third life. You feel they are never ready. They always have a chance for another life.

No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.

To achieve some depth in your field requires a lot of sacrifices.

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 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.