'Bum's Rush' is a piece about timing, and everything that's in the piece needs to be with the piece. If people are missing, or marking, or unable to use their voices, the impulses that prompt the action are lost, and its logic crumbles.

Walt Disney was a master of the human psychology. His sense of timing, sense of speed. In a sense, those cartoons are like Rorschach tests.

I've always believed that a dance evening energizes an audience, that an audience goes out feeling chemically stronger and more optimistic. This is what I understand about dance. And this is an important thing. We need this. Our culture needs it.

My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education, which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity, and there really was no judgment.

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

People often say to me, 'I don't know anything about dance.' I say, 'Stop. You got up this morning, and you're walking. You are an expert.'