Working is living to me.
I want to see people dance, and I would like to guess what kind of people they are. I don't want to know the recipe for their pasta.
To achieve some depth in your field requires a lot of sacrifices. Want to or not, you're thinking about what you're doing in life-in my case, dancing.
We're trying to stretch our muscles creatively. It gives us so much more freedom.
I don't drink milk, and I don't eat bread, pasta or rice. But I eat a lot of meat, chicken, fish and salads.
I fell in love with New York. It was like every human being, like any relationship. When I was a young New Yorker, it was one city. When I was a grown man, it was another city. I worked with many dance organizations and many wonderful people. In the '90s, it became kind of a hard and unwelcoming city in many ways. It became conservative, like the whole country.
I've always said, 'I am a selector, I am not defector' - the first few phrases in English I learned. I said I hate 'defector'; something defective about the people. It's a bad word.
You see, dancers are quite mature people because they start performing so early. They become professionals when they start to take everyday classes.
What brought me to the theater, no matter you're a Jew or a Russian or Armenian or Latvian, are suddenly illuminated by stage light and one beautiful image of dance.
I really reject that kind of comparison that says, Oh, he is the best. This is the second best. There is no such thing.
I think I got disappointed over the years about New York, about the States. You know, sometimes you go and visit Europe and see good old socialism in its good part! You see public concern about art, and young people's participation and young faces in the audience.
I cannot stand authority.
I always had a kind of strange relationship with New York City, with total love affair in the beginning then retreat during the kind of conservatives of politics and real estate and business came, and then I am again kind of fighting for the justice to the city, to open the city for the artists.
My mother had a son from previous marriage and her husband died in Second World War.
I don't try to dance better than anybody but myself.
Dancing is my obsession. My life.
People dance at any age.
If your only dance experience is the Nutcracker, it will be a shock; hopefully shocking in a good way.
I cannot belong to a nonprofit organization because when you receive grants, you have to make such great compromises with your artistic plans.
I remember vividly seeing 'Tarzan' and Fred Astaire, the Chaplin films, Fred Astaire musicals, MGM, because of my mother. She was just interested in everything and she took me to opera and ballet, and then ballet got me hooked.
I adored my mother, and I will always have extraordinary memories about her and remember her, and she opened the doors for me to appreciate arts.
You don't measure life by receiving awards.
Dancers are stripped enough onstage. You don't have to know more about them than they've given you already.
In the second part of life you get rid of stuff you've accumulated.
I was very restless. I really wanted to be a part of a kind of a progressive society. I was fed up with these Communist doctrines and you were hassled all the time with members of the Party committee who were KGB, what you have to do, where in the West you can go or not to go.
