It's ungrateful to be wishing you were doing something else at the moment you are living. You haven't lived in the moment that you are really living, you are wishing you were somewhere else.
Even though I am a professional, and I know what the steps are, I don't quite know how I'm going to do them, because I haven't lived that moment yet. I always feel very insecure and I get very excited.
There is pain and sacrifice in everyone's world. That's why, when I was dancing, I had no pain.
I didn't have any doubts about my choice of career, but I had constant doubts about my ability, yes.
The body can do amazing things in a situation when it is really called for.
As soon as I hear music, something in me starts to vibrate.
I used to love to play dress-up, where you get your mother's or your grandmother's dresses and high heels.
Once I started dancing, I was not the spoiled brat or the rebellious child that I was as a child.
I had two sisters, and we would love to get dressed up and pretend that we were chic, sophisticated ladies. And I think that was a great sort of preparation, in a way.
In fact, ballet companies did not exist in the Midwest when I was a child.
I'm thought of as a cool, unemotional dancer, but inside I'm not.
I was very much of a tomboy.
So dancing was not something I had a great desire to do.
But what was my motivation was music, and the fact that I love to move around. I'm always moving around.
That the work involved, the willingness to take chances, the commitment, the opportunity to get on stage and make people happy, was more important than becoming famous, or even what I was dancing.
The particular ballet was not so important as the fact that I was physically healthy, and capable of getting out there and dancing as often as possible.
I had a wonderful childhood, coming from Cincinnati, and I think that it was great going into the life that I was going to have, where you have to start young as a dancer.
I could work out a lot of my emotions by going to class and dancing.
I think especially in a world where you have so little say about what goes on in your life, or in the politics of the world around you, it is wonderful to go into that studio, and tell yourself what to do.
I loved tests because it was another form of competing, a healthy competition.
