I just can't help feeling joy when I dance the Waltz Girl. Afterwards, I feel so at peace and nourished as a ballerina.

I love to scuba dive, and Serenade reminds me of a reef, with schools of fish in all these different groupings, and singular entities darting in and out. Everything is blue, and the sweeping, wavelike movements take me to this happy place of doing something else that I love.

Balanchine didn't give it a story, but there's sort of a skeleton, a whisper of something being there—it's the story that you make it. Technically and emotionally, Serenade feels spiritual. I think that the Waltz Girl's first partner was perhaps a great love in her life, and in the "Elegy" she realizes he's gone and not coming back—the Dark Angel boy represents the spirit of the Waltz Boy.