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I do eventually want to get back into performing, but right now it's more fun for me to dance for myself.

I've always questioned the way dancers, myself included, must do the same role year in and year out. It's important for me to be able to say to myself, 'O.K., I don't want to be a prince anymore. I want to put on a leather jockstrap and pose.'

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.

You spend your life having lessons, practising and competing as an amateur, and working during the day. As you get to the top end of the amateur field, you try not to work anymore; you earn your living through dancing, maybe by doing a bit of teaching. It's an ongoing life's work.

I still dance, probably three times a week, unless I'm working on a crazy job, and then I just don't have any free time at all.

You have to dance unencumbered. There's no other way to move. The idea of dance is freedom. It is not exclusiveness, it's inclusiveness.

As a dancer, I know couples that have stayed married but separated to dance on different continents. Dance in general, but ballet in particular, is such a finite career. You can't do it later in life, and it's something that I think a dancer has to have some selfishness to fulfill.

If you want to make people dance, you need to follow certain rules. Build-ups and breaks and stuff. I like to be free. On top of it all, I never really felt that I'm good at making fat-sounding dance tracks.

There are very few dance companies in the world and you have to be phenomenal. You have to not be injured. You have to have a really strong mind to deal with the dance world. People who can do it are amazing to me. You cannot have a life outside of dance.

Dance never really goes away; it just reforms and reinvents, and it's become more athletic with new connection to fitness and sport. Dance used to have this exclusivity, but not any more.