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Today, dancers have so much more information and are much more mobile. Kids are traveling everywhere to go to summer programs, funding themselves with Kickstarter - putting their dreams on the Internet and seeing if they will pan out.
I think as a dancer you are always wanting to look your best, like in an outfit, you want an outfit to look the best it can on you, meaning weight is a huge one for a lot of dancers… you are always wanting to look better, look thinner.
I don't like teaching, because it's so repetitive - especially the beginning of class, which is always more or less the same and has to be carefully done. It's tedious. But I know it's necessary for dancers to keep working on technique.
My brother had a house in Paris. To it came many Western classical musicians. These musicians all made the same point: 'Indian music,' they said, 'is beautiful when we hear it with the dancers. On its own, it is repetitious and monotonous.'
Somewhere along the line, a concert became a variety show. It was no longer enough for four dudes to play together in front of some guitar amps. Costume changes, an army of dancers, and Broadway theatrics suddenly became standard for a 'concert.'
I was one of the assistant dancers of 'Race' 10 years ago, and now I am one of the lead actors of 'Race 3,' where I have got a chance to share screen space with some of the legends of our country like Anil Kapoor and Salman Khan. I am overwhelmed.
When I graduated from high school, I made the decision to pursue my dance training in London, England. I was so scared at first, not knowing if this little girl from small town Canada could possibly make it with these highly trained London dancers.
I've been to strip clubs where the dancers have these whole routines that they create just for the wow factor and to say, 'Look how strong and physically fit I am.' Most women couldn't do it, and it's not necessarily sexual. It's just a performance.
I'm in show business, and we have a long history here of making movies about law enforcement officers. If you're my age, and you're male, and you're trying to get work, you're going to run into those roles as opposed to having a long run of playing dancers.
Dancers, many dancers today can do so much technically. You can give them steps that are complicated, then more complicated, pyrotechnical - and they can execute these steps to perfection. But to do simple steps with a pure classical line, that is truly difficult.
When you are part of a massive TV show like Strictly,' it's not just about the professional dancers and celebrities taking part, there could be young or old people out there who are watching and they might also be inspired to take up dancing, and I find that so special.
I think it's always great to not be the smartest person in the room because I don't want to ever feel like I can't improve upon what I'm doing. I just want to surround myself with people that are better actors than me and better singers and dancers and see what happens.
Latino patriots have served and fought in every war. They are artists, dancers, singers, poets and journalists, teachers and scientists. More and more Latinos are becoming entrepreneurs and businesspeople, contributing to the wealth and economic well-being of the nation.
I don't just work with these kids to make them good tumblers or good dancers. I'm working with them to make them good citizens - to become taxpayers, not tax-eaters. I teach them to say please and thank you. I show them how to use a knife and fork and how to fold a napkin.
My wife Juliana and I first saw Eurovision while on our honeymoon in Greece in 2006, and we were amazed by it. They basically recreate a music video onstage, and pyro cannons, LED video screens, background dancers, fireworks, costume changes, and wind machines are their tools.
Same with anyone who's been flying for years and loves it still... we're part of a world we deeply love. Just as musicians feel about scores and melodies, dancers about the steps and flow of music, so we're one with the principle of flight, the magic of being aloft in the wind!
There are so many things I want to do. Like, I want to get an artist, a musician, a photographer, and a bunch of dancers that I know and just travel across Africa and just film it and just see what happens. Do and learn as much as I possibly can. Luckily, I have a lot more time.
I like to always remind my dancers about ways to avoid injury. One of the basic ways to avoid injury is to always make sure to stretch and warm up your body. This will loosen up your muscles, which will help to avoid common strain injuries such as shin splints and ankle strains.
I remember the first time I felt that I was sharing the stage with someone spectacular was dancing with Beyonce. It was the dancers, the band, Beyonce and me in front of thousands of people. That was sick. It was pretty amazing that I got to travel the world with someone like her.
I would definitely want kids. Would they be dancers? I dunno. That's up to them. If they show interest, I will push them do the best. I was not brought up in a dancer's family. I was brought up in a family where the mentality was whatever you do, you gotta try to be the best at it.
I was on Kanye's Yeezus tour as a dancer, but really, I was a Vanessa Beecroft model. I was one of the three 'dancers' who couldn't dance and was more of an accessory than an individual. Vanessa was pretty involved. Her style is about a lot of standing. It's very simple but haunting.
Tap dancers find it very difficult to do anything other than tap if that is all they have been trained in because, again, it's a whole different ballgame that you're constantly working on - bent legs, loose ankles - which you cannot afford to do when you're doing jumps or anything else.
Like dancers with choreography or actors with scripts, jazz singers could take material that was known, even loved, then risk interpreting and revising it. They could conceal even as they revealed themselves. Inflection, timing and tonality were their language, at least as much as words.
I'm the chairman of the board of the Actor's Fund. It's an incredible organization. It helps anybody that has made their living in the performing arts and entertainment: actors, singers, dancers, film producers, agents, managers, ticket takers, writers, anybody in times of need or crisis.
I started salsa dancing with a few different companies and started touring the country. It was fantastic, but I realized that I really wanted to talk every time we were performing. That's a problem because when you're dancing, if you stop to talk, that's not really cool to the other dancers.
Being in the wardrobe department meant me and a few other girls dressed the dancers during the show when they had quick changes. Thirty seconds to totally dress a sweaty dancer can be insane and provoke mucho anxiety. Doing this night after night was pretty cray, but I loved every minute of it.
I'm a really artistic person, and so, with the live stuff, there's a lot that I think is really cool. Beyonce and Rihanna have all these dancers. So with the live costumes and video costumes, I'd really like to have my vision. The way that I want people to dress is very specific. I love fashion.
I would do musicals in high school where there was dancing, and I would sing my verse, and then they would choreograph it so when I would take an eight-count to back up to the back of the stage while the other dancers covered me up because my body was totally... I was always in newborn-deer mode.
A lot of professional dancers become professional when they turn 15 or 16 years old, when they're still children. So you've trained every single waking moment up until that point for a career that could maybe only last 10 years, maybe longer if your body holds up, if your injuries are kept at bay.
It's important to get well-rounded right off the bat. A lot of experienced dancers can get pigeonholed into one thing. I've been hired for a lot of different gigs simply because I can do a lot of different things with different levels of dancers. And it's sad to me that some dancers don't do more.
I don't think it's about playing and singing, to be honest. That seems like old news, you know? I wasn't thinking about that. I just think that's in my body now. Dancers don't think about their legs moving one way and their arms moving another. Over time, you incorporate that into your instrument.
The people that have inspired me the most were dancers and choreographers. Even growing up, if I dealt with any pressure to be a certain way, I knew that as an artistic lane, dancing was the one that was a little more freed up - like, no one in my family is really doing that; I can be that person.
I will say a lot of dancers do such beautiful things for their body and then they smoke a cigarette. I've never been a smoker, but I realized after taking yoga . . . in ballet you're not encouraged to do a lot of breathing. I think in a weird way, a lot of dancers find relief in actually breathing.
I have done research about people who think they're doing movements and people - like Madonna and professional dancers - who are actually 'performing' movements. The people who can connect and perform during their workout get results way above and beyond the people who are just going through the motions.
What's interesting was with all the shows I did on Broadway, I was either the dance captain or the assistant choreographer - I sort of worked my way up to that kind of thing - and I always was interested in more than just the dancers and the numbers. I would always sneak into the room and watch the scene work.
I was runner that really started focusing on swimming at a very young age, and that's kind of how I got into acting. I was at a school for gifted athletes and gifted artists, and I got injured one year and started hanging out with all the actors and dancers and all those crazy people and started getting the bug.
From 1961 to 1964, I was fortunate enough to work at a think tank in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago. As a writer and editor, I reported in a publication about the thinkers. Our offices were in a former mansion; I worked in what had been the ballroom. As I sat typing my copy, I imagined the dancers waltzing.
As a child growing up in a grey-skied Yorkshire village, I would occasionally happen upon a Bollywood movie on the television. After a few minutes watching a bunch of sari-clad dancers cavorting on a Swiss mountain to tuneless music, I would switch over to some proper drama about housing estates and single mothers.
I went to a public high school and most of the comedy was coming from the black kids and the Asian kids and the Hispanic kids. And, the coolest kids to me where always the black kids. They were always fashion forward and they always dressed the coolest. They were always the best dancers, and just the coolest people.
Yes, I love going to fittings and talking about the history of a costume. For 'Versailles,' a play set in 1919, the costume designer told me that pocket squares had just been introduced. The tango was becoming fashionable in London, and dancers used them to mop their brows. I love to learn fascinating stuff like that.
Mr. Balanchine wanted me to be myself. He didn't want me to look like anyone else. I love teaching our company dancers the Balanchine ballets. I try to give them what was passed down to me and what I learned from him. They dance it so beautifully. It also keeps me close to Mr. Balanchine. He's with me every single day.
I'm glad I was born when I was. My time was the golden age of variety. If I were starting out again now, maybe things would happen for me, but it certainly would not be on a variety show with 28 musicians, 12 dancers, two major guest stars, 50 costumes a week by Bob Mackie. The networks just wouldn't spend the money today.
With Michael Jackson, when he moved, it looked like a martial artist to me. He was quicker than other dancers, but he didn't have muscles; he was just quicker and looked more in control of gravity. He looked like a martial arts master, so I tried to steal body movement from him; that's why I imitate Michael Jackson a little bit.
In the Royal Ballet Company, there was a Japanese principal dancer, and onstage and in ballet, they have colorblind castings - so I did see Asian dancers, and they were always my favorite. When you have someone who looks like you, it's something you can kind of grab onto, and it makes you feel better about your place in the world.
Dancers work and they work and they work, and they master their skills so far that improvisation just comes flowing out of them. Their natural expression of the best they can possibly be comes out of them because there is no boundary to hold them back... That's the mentality that I'm trying to create, recreate and hold on to forever.
I have a picture of all of us going to a club with my friends from 'Soul Train.' All the girls just going out to a nightclub, and we're all dressed like we were dressed on 'Soul Train.' It was the most surreal experience for me because I walk into the club with them, and people started screaming. 'Oh my God! It's the 'Soul Train' dancers.'
Obviously, the young dancers lack a certain air of maturity.
I sent 200, 300 of the clothes that I had made, and the dancers chose what they liked.
I find that dancers are only well trained in ballet these days.
When I was a dancer, I would see that dancers were treated like garbage. I mean like, like extras.