Once I started dancing, I was not the spoiled brat or the rebellious child that I was as a child.

I set as my goal to be the best dancer I could be. Not the most famous, or the highest paid dancer, just the best I could be. Out of this discipline came great freedom and calm.

The arts are the hospitals for our souls.

When you are on stage in front of an audience, you want to engage the entire crowd. If a thousand people are in the theater, you need to dance a thousand different ways, not one-thousandth of a way.

So dancing was not something I had a great desire to do.

I loved the stage not because it provided an escape from myself or my humdrum life but because when the curtain went up I could be whoever I wanted to be, and that was true freedom - to be myself.

I think it was important that I learned to love to dance eventually for its own sake, as opposed to wanting to be a ballerina.