Dances have a second and third life. You feel they are never ready. They always have a chance for another life.
Choreographers use me as the old guy who still dances. Not that I put on white tights.
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.
I go a lot to see young people downtown in little theaters. It's great. If you start somebody's career, it's so exciting.
My life has been immensely enriched by gay mentors, colleagues and friends, and any discrimination and persecution of gay people is unacceptable.
In any art form, in Hollywood or in music, there is a handful of people who really, you know, move the envelope.
No matter what I try to do or explore, my Kirov training, my expertise, and my background call me to return to dancing after all, because that's my real vocation, and I have to serve it.
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.
Although I don't gamble in life - I've never played poker - I do gamble on stage. I gamble with myself: 'Can I do this?'
In '74 it was really a very gloomy atmosphere, I would say, to put it mildly.
I would like to go and dance in Palestine one day, with great pleasure, great pleasure.
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.
Soviet regime in a way deprived me from my childhood in my homeland, because my father was in military, and after the Yalta agreement he was sent to teach in military academy in Riga, and I was born then.
I miss horribly those couple of hours before the performance when you get into the theater and you see people.
I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. I played their game, pretending. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB. Horrifying.
I think art education, especially in this country, which government pretty much ignores, is so important for young people.
It's what's left in life, to work with interesting people.
The Russian people get so insanely close to each other as friends. Their lives are interrelated so much on an everyday basis.
I'm an impatient person in many respects. I like to put myself in uncomfortable situations. It forces me to deliver.
Now there is in a way a renaissance of modern dance - suddenly, it is more respected and discovered.
