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Certainly the life of a dancer is very difficult. The training is very hard and relentlessly grueling.

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

I never wanted to be a dancer. I was too big, I was too slow. I remember not liking it. Later on, when I came to the United States, I realized I had a skill, and when you come to this country, you realize if you have a skill and a determination, you can do anything.

For a performer, passion is far more important than technical skills. If a dancer's leg isn't at a perfect angle, I can see past that, but if someone's dead in the face, it's really boring.

Modern dancers should be doing things no one else is doing, and it should come from the gut.

I didn't want to be a dancer. I just did it to work my way through college. But I was always an athlete and gymnast, so it came naturally.

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.

A dancer's life is hard - it is so physically demanding, and at any moment, you could have an injury that could end your career.

In those days, male dancers were a rarer breed than women. as they are still today, A good male dancer, one as strong as we were, was very difficult to come by if you couldn't afford to pay them.

It's an unfortunate reality of being a male dancer that it's not really looked upon... it's not appreciated.