I use something that is a real staple in the directing world. It's called a dance floor. You lay it down so that it's so smooth you can roll around, and you can put furniture on top of it. It's seamless and you don't see it.

Making this movie was a great opportunity for me to explore high-definition. I'm glad I got to see what the challenges are, what makes it better. It works wonderfully.

The clothes back in those days were made so much better than clothes are today. They actually took time to make clothes to fit a woman's body. Today they make clothes that fit sizes, so it stretches to fit this and that.

The radio for these women is like television is for us today, which is really like looking at the radio.

A director just pushes them a little this way or that way.

But it was not possible to do this movie, in this matter of time, without a solid rehearsal period.

In scoring we have a lot that was not evident in the shooting. The radio is on all the time.

The biggest challenge was that we had to shoot so quickly and with such a limited budget.

I use something that is a real staple in the directing world. It's called a dance floor. You lay it down so that it's so smooth you can roll around, and you can put furniture on top of it. It's seamless and you don't see it.

It's kind of dangerous to cut in the camera, but that's the only way I know how to direct.

You have to examine a scene on the page first. Then you get into the basics of acting: Who are you? Who are you talking to? How do you feel about that person?

There are some scenes that work beautifully in a moving, sweeping master, which is how I like to work.

Even when you have a big budget, you can't just shoot everything.

As far as pacing the shoot is concerned, I know when I've got it. I don't think there's any reason to take ten takes unless you need them.

That's the only way I can control my movie. If you shoot everything, then everything is liable to end up in the movie. If you have a vision, you don't have to cover every scene.

Michael Ralph brilliantly plays the street prophet, a West Indian who foreshadows the Harlem riot.

The riot isn't seen in the movie, but it is alluded to. He has this one speech that gives a great sense of texture and paints a picture of what was happening in Harlem then.

Everything has to be well thought out - what do you really need, when can you do with less coverage.

Time management is a big part of the director's job.

The production team's first meeting took place at my house. I had ideas and a color scheme in mind, how I wanted the movie to look, because that has to be a real collaboration.

It goes back to a style of moviemaking I remember seeing as a child, in movies like The Man With The Golden Arm, which I think was shot all on a sound stage.

But out of limitations comes creativity.

I got my dailies every day, although I couldn't always look at them because I was usually preparing for the next day's shoot, both as an actress and as the director.

I'm always moving forward.

I design my shots. I walk the rehearsal as the camera and say 'this is where I want to be... I want this look.

I didn't need the insurance. I do it again if my DP tells me it didn't look good in the camera or if the actors didn't hit their marks. But if everything was working why do it again?

The Lord doesn't like us to be dead. Be alive. Sometimes I dance to the glory of the Lord, because He said so.

I never danced a step in my life so naturally. My first motion picture was a musical, and Bob Fosse was the choreographer. I didn't exactly dance for Fosse, I just did the best that I could to do what he taught us to do.

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

I cannot sing, dance or act; what else would I be but a talk show host.

No matter how close to yours another's steps have grown, in the end there is one dance you'll do alone.

When I got a lap dance, because I was 17, they had to put a massive pillow between me and the girl when she was grinding me. It was weird, yet pleasurable.

I grew up with six brothers. That's how I learned to dance - waiting for the bathroom.

I would love to do more music, definitely. That is my true passion. Dance is first and then music.

They're not particular about whether you're playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

I have thought about the next steps, and you know, they still don't know that I can dance. They don't know it, and it's frustrating me because I feel that it's an edge that I have, and I'm not talking about I took this hip hop class, I'm talking about this is how people actually know me.

The real message of the Dance opens up the vistas of life to all who have the urge to express beauty with no other instrument than their own bodies, with no apparatus and no dependence on anything other than space.

It's always been my dream to do a dance scene with Anthony Hopkins.

Sex in a dance is in the eyes of the beholder. I never thought my dances sexy. I suppose that's because I see myself with my face washed, and to me I look like a rabbit.

I had certain physical limitations that made me change the choreography for myself or made me more interested in choreography only rather than dancing. I have never been a person who wanted to just dance. I have always been interested in developing for other people.

We were at our best when we were playing in the dance halls of Liverpool and Hamburg. The world never saw that.

We want to be the band to dance to when the bomb drops.

Life is like dancing. If we have a big floor, many people will dance. Some will get angry when the rhythm changes. But life is changing all the time.

People come to see beauty, and I dance to give it to them.

The dance world is too small in lots of ways - it's too intense, it rattles around itself, and it needs exposing to other ideas.

I wasn't out drinking and abusing my body. I simply loved to go out and dance.

And dance is wonderful because dance is so immediate.

Disco is just pop music you can dance to.

For a London play, rehearsal time would be four weeks for the entire show. In films, I'd spend six weeks on the big dance numbers to get them perfect before the actual shooting.