What do you want to do next with the company and what do you want to do for yourself?

I want to sit in my vineyard. To drink good wine! And enjoy the fantastic view and not be nervous about are the dancers coming tomorrow or not? And are they healthy or not? [Laughs] But I really enjoy what I’m doing. Even thought it’s hard. Sometimes I’m tired.

I had a very great Russian teacher, Raisa Struchkova — like 23 years we were together in the Bolshoi. Then in the 16 years with A.B.T., it was Irina Kolpakova. I’m so thankful to these teachers in my life. And I think it will be very sad if I really enjoy life and do nothing, to not give this to a young generation.

So you keep going.

Every day I’m saying, God, thank you, you gave me these kind of people and I feel like they are really helping me now. What they said to me — sometimes I have this in my ear, even the words that they said to me, how they corrected me, what they taught me. The ballet world is like this. You cannot read books. Of course, it helps. You watch videos. It also helps. But nothing, nothing does the same job.

You need to have the person next to you, to see you, correct you, Because we are human, we are different. So this is our job. And my teacher told me always: “Listen now, you will use this later when you will be teaching.”

How did you react to that?

I was young. I said, my God, I want to dance. What do you mean, I will be teaching? And now, when I’m teaching, I just say: “Remember what I say to you. Remember because when one day you will teach, you will do the same thing like I do now.” This is generation by generation — it goes feet by feet, hand by hand. I think there is no other job like that.

Do you dance at all, or do you have a movement practice?

I’m bad now. [Laughs] You know, every day I say, OK, I need to go a little to practice — for myself — and then something comes up. And I’m so bad. And now when I want to show “you see, you can do it jumping more,” but this is very dangerous now because I put weight on also. I’m not that skinny. I just say it like this: I’m not ballerina now. I am a human now. Normal.