Independent dance - and, fine, it's a very good thing that it remains independent - is a much tougher life: all dancers expect that, and accept that there will be periods of not being able to work, provided there are choice moments during the year when they really can work.

I don't start a piece knowing exactly what effect it's going to have. There is a seed of an idea that I could never articulate, right at the beginning of the piece, literally like one cell.

We could ask artists from abroad to come in too, so that there could be a mixing and matching of skills from Europe, America and here which would widen our world.

The dance world is too small in lots of ways - it's too intense, it rattles around itself, and it needs exposing to other ideas.

Well, it's not full time - my dancers are only paid for six months of the year in two three-month blocks; but yes, it is possible we could do it in another year.

Yes - it's the same in any other work - the more you massage your thinking the more capable I believe you are of expanding how you go about things and learning.

Then I came in twice a week - for my own enjoyment as well as to be a guide. And then we started to apply some of the splinters of the ideas back into the piece.