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.

As people who have commitments and obligations, we try to blockade emotions and go on our course towards excellence, and that's a lie. I've definitely paid a price. Everything is an exchange.

In dreams, anything can be anything, and everybody can do. We can fly, we can turn upside down, we can transform into anything.

I walk into a large white room. It's a dance studio in midtown Manhattan. The room is clean, virtually spotless if you don’t count the thousands of skid marks and footprints left there by dancers rehearsing. Other than the mirrors, the boom box, the skid marks, and me, the room is empty.

Dance has never been a particularly easy life, and everybody knows that.

I began to discriminate between fear and excitement. The two, though very close, are completely different. Fear is negative excitement, choking your imagination. Real excitement produces an energy that overcomes apprehension and makes you want to close in on your goal.

Creativity requires quite a lot of faith - not just in yourself but also in the knowledge that you have the right to proceed, even when you may not know exactly what you're doing.