I love creating new choreography.

Every performance is a new adventure.

It’s about feeling free.

The stage is where I feel alive.

Art is meant to be shared.

It’s important to follow your passion.

I enjoy directing as much as performing.

Every dance tells a story.

Dancing is a universal language.

Creativity is a gift.

Dance is the poetry of the foot.

I’ve always felt that film should be a shared experience.

Dancing is a way of expressing feelings.

The magic of the movies is in the dance.

I love to work.

Life is a dance.

There’s nothing like dancing to a good piece of music.

It’s about the love of the art.

I don’t dance to impress others, I dance to inspire them.

Kids talk to me and say they want to do musicals again because they’ve studied the tapes of the old films. We didn’t have that. We thought once we had made it, even on film, it was gone except for the archives.

Musicals are like life—there’s a lot of rhythm and movement.

The film is a kind of an opera.

I wanted to invent some kind of American dance that was danced to the music that I grew up on: Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart and Irving Berlin. So I evolved a style that certainly didn’t catch on right away – but I had some good mentors in New York who encouraged me.

Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.

There’s nothing revolutionary about Saturday Night Fever. You can see the same kind of movement at your local disco.

I think the greatest thing is the act of creation.

I miss the romance. I keep saying this over and over again, but dance follows music. And if the accent today is percussion and rhythm and loudness, then that is the way the dance numbers will be. But it is pretty hard on romance with seven guitars, three drums, and no melody instruments in the band.

Dance is my escape, my way of finding freedom in a chaotic world.

The finest all-around performer we ever had in America was Judy Garland. There was no limit to her talent. She was the quickest, brightest person I ever worked with.

If Fred Astaire is the Cary Grant of dance, I’m the Marlon Brando

To me, the greatest thing is the talent you can give to others.

The way I look at a musical, you are commenting on the human condition no matter what you do. A musical may be light and frivolous, but by its very nature, it makes some kind of social comment.

I don’t want people to just watch me dance, I want them to feel what I’m feeling.

At 14, I discovered girls. At that time, dancing was the only way you could put your arm around the girl. Dancing was courtship. Only later did I discover that you dance joy. You dance love. You dance dreams.

My mother had gotten a job as a receptionist at a dancing school and had the idea that we should open our own dancing school; we did, and it prospered.

Dancing is a sweat job.

Doing things you’re afraid of, that’s what makes life worth living.

I still find it almost impossible to relax for more than one day at a time.

I’d studied dance in Chicago every summer end taught it all winter, and I was well-rounded. I wasn’t worried about getting a job on Broadway. In fact, I got one the first week.

Things danced on the screen do not look the way they do on the stage. On the stage, dancing is three-dimensional, but a motion picture is two-dimensional.

I believe in living today.

Dancing isn’t just about moving your feet, it’s about expressing your emotions.

Any man who looks like a sissy while dancing is just a lousy dancer.

I wanted to do new things with dance, adapt it to the motion picture medium.

I’ll never starve.

You’re only as good as your last performance.

The future of dance will always be tied up with the public’s acceptance of the star. If they accept the star, then they’ll accept the dance.

I don’t want to be a Hollywood superstar, I want to be a legend.

I may be rancid butter, but I’m on your side of the bread.

When Ginger Rogers danced with Astaire, it was the only time in the movies when you looked at the man, not the woman.

The only way to be happy is to be yourself.

Dance is the hidden language of the soul.

In the 1930s there was this tendency in Hollywood to portray everyone as rich. Even if they were doing a poor man’s dance, they were all so nicely clothed, gowned, coiffured. That’s why I decided to wear white socks, loafers, T-shirts, and blue jeans. I had a sociopolitical context in front of me: I was a child of the Depression who danced in a way that would represent the common man.

Dignity, always Dignity!

I think dancing is a man’s game and if he does it well he does it better than a woman.

I’m a little bit of a dreamer.

I didn’t want to move or act like a rich man. I wanted to dance in a pair of jeans. I wanted to dance like the man in the streets.

You dance love, and you dance joy, and you dance dreams.

I’m a dancer, and a dancer dances.