My philosophy on choreography is that the making of a ballet is a team effort, and we're in this together. It's not me hammering on them. It's more about how we can elevate this piece collectively to something great.

The future of ballet is really in the hands of the creators, so if it's something that interests them to push the envelope with gender roles, then I think it will change. But if that's not of interest to a dance-maker, if their interest is to sort of preserve the way things have been done for the past 200 years, then nothing is going to change.

The reason I started dancing in the first place was my dad took me to see 'Bring In 'da Noise, Bring In 'da Funk' when I was 9.

It's expensive to get studio space and dancers. My whole first three years, I was sneaking around in the studios and getting kicked out of them. It was kind of depressing.

Education is paramount in light of so many things that are out there.

It's always important to read, to know something about this world, so I try to learn, to know, to see what I can learn for myself. Be it from books, TV or the Internet, I try to know what happened in the world.

I planned on being an English teacher, but I don't know where that went.

It's not enough to train today's workforce. We also have to prepare tomorrow's workforce by guaranteeing every child access to a world-class education.