If I'm at a party, I can put on some crazy dance moves. However, it's not synchronized, beautiful or choreographed like a ballet dancer. I'd love to be graceful like that.
In film, a dancer should always be shot from head to toe, because that way you can see the whole body and that is the art of dancing. Nowadays they shoot the nose. Left nostril. Right nostril. Hand. Foot. Bust. Derrière. The film prevents you from determining who is a good dancer and who is not.
When I was a kid, toe dancing and toe shoes had a meaning in our culture as a serious kind of art.
Dancing is a very living art. It is essentially of the moment, although a very old art. A dancer's art is lived while he is dancing. Nothing is left of his art except the pictures and the memories--when his dancing days are over.
And it is always Easter Sunday at the New York City Ballet. It is always coming back to life. Not even coming back to life - it lives in the constant present.
The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body. I don't leap and jump anymore. I look at young dancers, and I am envious, more aware of what glories the body contains. But sensitivity is not made dull by age.
The one reason people don't take dance seriously is because a lot of choreographers don't take dance seriously.
The way Alvin Ailey has transformed modern dance and dance in general is the fact of variety. It's a cornucopia of ways to move. There are choreographers in the company as - as diverse, as different from each other as Donald McKayle and Bill T. Jones, or Jawole Zollar and John Butler, Lar Lubovitch, you know, and Judith Jamison.
Sometimes during a ballet I'll look around and see all these rows of intent faces, concentrating on this beautiful thing up on the stage.
Now there is in a way a renaissance of modern dance - suddenly, it is more respected and discovered.
Being called a dance photographer makes me bristle. You might say that dance is my landscape. The root of my interest is movement or, rather, how movement can be interpreted photographically, and dance provides a perfect opportunity for this.
I think for a female celebrity the Samba is one of the hardest dances to feel relaxed, to feel kind of sexy and running around the room doing the technique of a very hard dance.
Martin Joyce is a beautiful dancer and an amazing choreographer. He choreographed the Mulberry dance film I was in, 'From London with Love.' A truly talented man.
Dancing has been in us, in people, since the Neanderthal age. There's something about moving, something about interpreting yourself to the music, that's attractive, that's interesting, that's intriguing, and everyone wishes they could do that.
Choreographers, historically, are born, not made - their talents drive them to it.
So much is made about the beginnings of ballet careers, the rosebud, and then once the petals and leaves start falling off, is it beautiful anymore? Some people think it is; some people don't. The expectation is to focus on the very beautiful parts, not the ending.
I have maintained a low profile throughout my career but have always done things in my own unique way, be it dancing or dressing up. On the dance floor, I had my own unique steps and often had to lead my choreographer.
What guarantees - or at least semi-guarantees - good ballets is good choreographers, and they are thin on the ground.
