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I always wanted to entertain. When I was six, a scrawny, scrawny kid, I'd get in my red speedo and do muscle moves. I actually thought I was muscular. I didn't know everyone was laughing at me.

Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.

One of my most laughable moments was when we visited the monkeys in Ubud - they really seemed to like me and at one point, I had three males on my head and shoulders.

But, I couldn't live without creation gymnastics.

I think if you're good and you can persuade people you're going to be able to do that role and ultimately the audience buys it, then it doesn't matter whether you were really a chimpanzee in disguise! You've done it.

I had to relearn how to ride a horse like an ape. I had to change how I jumped off and how I gripped them with my thighs and distribute my weight differently.

For a while, the world for me was like a set of monkey bars. I swung from one place to the next, sometimes backward, sometimes forward, capitalizing on my own momentum, knowing that at some point my arms... would give out, and I'd fall to the ground.

I'd never had so much pleasure with another human being.

I always felt a weird obligation to be adventurous.

I did not want to be a tree, a flower or a wave. In a dancer's body, we as audience must see ourselves, not the imitated behavior of everyday actions, not the phenomenon of nature, not exotic creatures from another planet, but something of the miracle that is a human being.