I wanted to give people - which is fairly bizarre considering my whole life is contemporary dance really - I wanted to give people a really fulfilling sense that they had seen a white classical ballet - in a very pure form.

No one was creating and I always wanted to be created on.

Mostly, I'm in the very enviable position that no one dictates what I do.

And dance is wonderful because dance is so immediate.

I'm interested in people who can take the movement somewhere.

If the year 2000 can help us move into the future, that's fine, but I am afraid that people see it as a full stop and that one can take a big breath afterwards - you can't.

We moved, and there was a golden era in the '40s when we were so conscious of who we were as Australians.

I look at the dancers and I get the inspiration for the work from them.

Dance is so joyous.

We also tour nationally and internationally.

It's not a company of exponents of my style.

I think the Olympics could help us reach more people.

There's a line of dancers waiting to get into Sydney Dance Company.

Normally our season is seven weeks in the Drama Theatre and four weeks in the Opera Theater.

It's the emotional trigger points that are important to me because I know if I could believe in the characters and try and imagine how they felt then I'd be able to do something quite honest.

For me it was really important to get the essence out of the music for the story and not, sort of, press the music into the service of the whimsical telling of it.

But I also wanted to give them an intelligent emotional journey, without having to suspend reality - to be able to look at those characters and see reasons for the relationships and why what happens happens.

I wanted to give people - which is fairly bizarre considering my whole life is contemporary dance really - I wanted to give people a really fulfilling sense that they had seen a white classical ballet - in a very pure form.

And currently, there are four to five new works in the pipeline for upcoming celebrations such as the Sydney 2000 Olympics, Australian Federation, my 50th Birthday, and Sydney Dance Company's 25th Anniversary.

I think it requires a bit of honesty, Swan Lake.

I don't think people we'll miss the fact that SDC is way up there and that our profile is high.

I'm thrilled at the moment because our audiences, you know, they... the demographic is 50% male.

Yes, Carl Vine stuck around. He's now number one composer for choreography.

SDC has a great reputation for putting live music on stage.

I always figure I have this tree and there's always some green fruit that's not ready to pick or blossoms that are ready to flower; there are always some ready to drop off too.

Sydney is a very good market for us - we have a very strong following here.

I'm in the position to pick the cream of the crop.

We can't afford big symphonies but we commission works that sound rich and symphonic because of the nature of the instrumentation and the people we work with.

I actually build my dreams around the dancers I've got in my company.

I mean, I think in the early days we were pretty... pretty British in our entertainment leads.

Dance is very, very old. With Louis XIV at Versailles is where ballet started.

I wanted to be a ballet teacher.

Classical ballet will never die.

I've got no plans to be a ballet dancer at the moment.

When life takes me on a new journey, I simply remember the smile my first ballet recital put on my face and I move forward.

Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery.

The moment the curtain rose on that first ballet, I knew something wonderful and new had come into my life. I can still see the first scene. The ballet was Divertimento No. 15.

My grandmother had a Miss Margaret's School of Dance to teach tap and ballet to kids, but I never studied it. I was raised a Mormon and they're dancing fools. It's the only vice they have - dancing.

The real beauty of it - key to my life was playing key chords on a banjo. For somebody else it may be a golf club that mom and dad put in their hands or a baseball or ballet lessons. Real gift to give to me and put it in writing.

My background is somewhat unusual, as I trained to be a ballet dancer. I worked in the theatre for eight or nine years as a contemporary dancer. But as an actor one does read Shakespeare and does try to learn the classics.

However, the moral center of New York City, I believe, is the New York City Ballet.

I have ballet class every other day for two hours. And for "Six Feet Under", last week there was a sequence where I had to do a whole choreographed dance number, so I had four hours of dance practice every day.

I do take class because I still dance, and yes, I do slip into class with the Royal Ballet from time to time.

And it is always Easter Sunday at the New York City Ballet. It is always coming back to life. Not even coming back to life - it lives in the constant present.

It's no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, 'Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.' By then, pigs will be your style.

For 24 hours a day, for 10 years, all I thought about was being in a band. That's all I did. I had no other social life. I don't want my life to be like that now. I've spent the past 10 years having a real life as well. But Spandau Ballet is such a difficult shadow to outrun.

When other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers I kind of wanted to be a vampire.

The New York City Ballet is always about the realm of possibilities, the realm of what the human body can do, what the human spirit can do. And it's about listening, it's about listening to remarkable music and how we respond to that.

I used to dance when I was younger - ballet and modern dance.