By the end of 'Swan Lake,' you know how there's all the corps on stage, and she keeps running in the back, doing arms? You can't feel your arms. You're just like, 'Ow.'

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.

There are positives to moving around and changing companies: you put things in perspective; you can compare living and working conditions. Living in one city, you tend to take things for granted; your view is much more narrow. In Europe, a dancer can leave for a year and still keep her original contract.

At age 14, coming to the U.S., all I knew was American Ballet Theatre, Baryshnikov, Nureyev, and some of the European companies. I barely knew anything about Balanchine.