Quote

Practicing is not only playing your instrument, either by yourself or rehearsing with others - it also includes imagining yourself practicing. Your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining the task or actually doing it.

I found that dance, music, and literature is how I made sense of the world... it pushed me to think of things bigger than life's daily routines... to think beyond what is immediate or convenient.

I think it's one thing to be able to dance, and it's another thing to learn all the wonderful moments of dance because in my day... it was the moving of dance.

There were times I wouldn't come to practice, because it didn't excite me. It wasn't interesting. I was kind of going through the motions.

The stage and the live crowd taught me to think on my feet, to improvise.

Dancers work and they work and they work, and they master their skills so far that improvisation just comes flowing out of them. Their natural expression of the best they can possibly be comes out of them because there is no boundary to hold them back... That's the mentality that I'm trying to create, recreate and hold on to forever.

I don't really think about dance except just before rehearsals start. I put it off. I don't live my life thinking about dance.

I started in dance classes when I was, like, seven years old. And the arts in general, it kept me not only off the street, I grew up in South Central Los Angeles, so it kept my mind focused. It kept me passionate about something. So I wasn't easily distracted.

Any professional athlete will tell you that the mind is everything. For me, there is no shame in saying that I visualize and I meditate, because it really works.

Honestly, I am so ignorant of how dance works that I can't even imagine a story that you would want to tell through movement.