With each piece I've completed I have worked to make it intact, and each of them has been an equal high. It's like children. A mother refuses to pick out one as a favorite, and I can't do any better with the dances.

when the time came I would do battle with my mother for the right to sit at the center of my own life.

I never studied with Balanchine, but his work was very important to me.

There's an energy that comes through the release of tension that is laughter.

The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.

I repeat the wake-up, the workout, the quick shower, the breakfast of three hard-boiled egg whites and a cup of coffee, the hour to make my morning calls and deal with correspondence, the two hours of stretching and working out ideas by myself in the studio ... That's my day, every day. A dancer's life is all about repetition.

I began ear training when I was about six months old. My mother was a concert pianist, and she started all of her children with music before they were a year old. Then she began to see that I had a musical gift...