One clear difference between art and commercial work is that commercial work is exploitive: the work may be high quality but the intention is to sell product or tickets. Art exists with or without ticket sales.

There really is nothing I ever had access to that I didn't appreciate.

By making the start of the sequence automatic, they replace doubt and fear with comfort and routine.

I have always felt one of the things dance should do - its business being so clearly physical - is challenge the culture's gender stereotypes.

The formal education that I received made little sense to me.

I also had a will that let me eliminate everything that stood in the way of my becoming the best dancer I could be. By a gradual process... (I) had invested every bit of my dreams, my hopes, my energies in defining myself as a dancer.

The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.