I Got Started Dancing Because I Knew

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.

It Fit Into My Scheme Of Things For Many Reasons. At The Time It Was True That Male Dancers Were Looked Down Upon, And It Was True That A Lot Of The Male Dancers Were Effeminate. But What I Was Really Trying To Do Was Develop Something That Would Be American.

I Wanted To Do New Things With Dance, Adapt It To The Motion Picture Medium.

When I Would Create A Dance, I Wouldn't Have The Luxury That Ballet People Do When They Take A Piece Of Music And Impose A Dance Upon It. What We Did In Motion Pictures Was Have A Song And Within That Song Try To Elaborate. My Usual Method Was To Do What A Writer Does: Get A Plot.

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.