Back in the '80s, I was a young dancer struggling to make it in the Big Bad Apple, broke and despairing of ever having a shot at success. At the time, I was studying ballet with a wonderfully eccentric Romanian, Madame Darvash, who, whenever I failed to execute her commands with the required precision, would scream, "Get my gun; I'm going to shoot you!" Her studio was in the shadows of the famed Lincoln Center, where the New York City Ballet performed, a company filled with otherworldly creatures with superhuman technique.