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You see, dancers are quite mature people because they start performing so early. They become professionals when they start to take everyday classes.

Obviously, the young dancers lack a certain air of maturity.

A lot of professional dancers become professional when they turn 15 or 16 years old, when they're still children. So you've trained every single waking moment up until that point for a career that could maybe only last 10 years, maybe longer if your body holds up, if your injuries are kept at bay.

But you do have to start young as a dancer if you're going to achieve the physical skills necessary.

Most dancers are less eccentric than driven. It starts young. When other kids are at the playground, we're in the studio, endlessly drilling jumps and adjusting our socks.

Young dancers are training at a very vulnerable time in their lives, through adolescence, and while they are trying to work out who they are as people, never mind as a dancer. So train the whole person, not just the dancer.

There's no dancer alive better than those of the 1950s and 1960s. It's only the energy that changes. Every now and then, someone like me comes along, and people say, 'Oh, this guy is this new thing.' But that's not so. There is no me without them. The tradition just goes on.

40 years old is about the time a principal dancer would start to think about retirement, but some go on to dance a little bit longer than that.

I danced a lot when I was younger, and I've always had decent, shapely legs and thought it's now or never. I mean, when you're pushing 40, are you really going to wander around in a dress that's midthigh length?