Failing, and learning from it, is necessary. Unil you've done it, you're missing an important piece of your creative arsenal.

Obligation is a flimsy base for creativity, way down the list behind passion, courage, instinct, and the desire to do something great.

It takes skill to bring something you've imagined into the world: to use words to create believable lives, to select the colors and textures of paint to represent a haystack at sunset, to combine ingredients to make a flavorful dish. No one is born with that skill. It is developed through exercise, through repitition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time. . . . If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.

I think people want very much to simplify their lives enough so that they can control the things that make it possible to sleep at night.

Every dance I make is a dive into this well of ancient memory.

Every work of art needs a spine – an underlying theme, a motive for coming into existence. It doesn't have to be apparent to the audience. But you need it at the start of the creative process to guide you and keep you going.

Modern dancers should be doing things no one else is doing, and it should come from the gut.