Twyla Tharp Quotes & Sayings

It is extremely arrogant and very foolish to think that you can ever outwit your audience. — Twyla Tharp

Who a dancer is physically feeds into character for me. Always has. — Twyla Tharp

The only way to know the truth of a movement is to do it on your own body. — Twyla Tharp

You can only generate ideas when you put pencil to paper, brush to canvas ... when you actually do something physical. — Twyla Tharp

When you stimulate your body, your brain comes alive in ways you can't simulate in a sedentary position. — Twyla Tharp

Kids should be encouraged to compete. — Twyla Tharp

But obligation, I eventually saw, is not the same as commitment, and it's certainly not an acceptable reason to stick with something that isn't working — Twyla Tharp

My favorite audience is everybody. I worked in a drive-in theater from the time I was 8 years old until I went to college, and I'm accustomed to everybody can buy a ticket and everybody should be taken into account. — Twyla Tharp

Zoe refers to the aggregate. Bios accommodates the notion of death, that each life has a beginning, middle, and end, that each life contains a story. Zoe, wrote Kerenyi, "does not admit of the experience of its own destruction: it is experienced without end, as infinite life. — Twyla Tharp

Reading is your first line of defense against an empty head. — Twyla Tharp

I grew up in a drive-in theater, from the time I was 8, working in a snack bar watching four features every week. It was silent theater in the sense that this was a drive-in, which meant that I often saw the films going with no sound. But I learned to tell stories through action. — Twyla Tharp

I often say that in making dances I can make a world where I think things are done morally, done democratically, done honestly. — Twyla Tharp

I look for dancers who have all the technique in the world. But they must be dancers who are open-minded, who are willing to forget that they know anything. They also have to be gorgeous; they must have a clear image of themselves and strong personalities. — Twyla Tharp

I'm willing to be regarded as a tyrant to keep my vision intact. — Twyla Tharp

I don't believe in rushing and saying this is done and over with. That form of rebellion doesn't make sense to me. I've always attempted to familiarize myself with the traditions, and consider that a responsibility of the artist. — Twyla Tharp

I don't think that scheduling is uncreative. I think that structure is required for creativity. — Twyla Tharp

The great ones never take fundamentals for granted. — Twyla Tharp

I used to say to myself, 'Well, in the old days everybody danced because they loved to dance, and there was none of this professional garbage going on about how much can you get for this or that or the other, or any of the kinds of things that insecurity can sometimes promote. Sometimes it's for the wrong reasons.' — Twyla Tharp

No one is born with skill. It is developed through exercise, through repetition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time. — Twyla Tharp

The notion of the hero as outsider, as alien, is forget it, over, done with. It's not about being against society anymore. It's about standing there, holding something up. It's not pulling away. — Twyla Tharp

That's what improvising is like for me. There's no tollbooth between my impulse and my action. — Twyla Tharp

Without the little ideas, there are no big ideas. — Twyla Tharp

Judgment is not my business. Existing is my business. — Twyla Tharp

I can't emphasize this idea enough. Getting involved with your collaborator's problems almost always distracts you from your own. That can be tempting. That can be a relief. But it usually leads to disaster. — Twyla Tharp

The necessity to constantly turn in an excellent performance, to be absolutely wedded to this dedication and this ideal means that as a child you're going to pay for it personally. — Twyla Tharp

The art of these Fifties movies was in sustaining forever the moment before sex. — Twyla Tharp

Creativity is more about taking the facts, fictions, and feelings we store away and finding new ways to connect them. What we're talking about here is metaphor. Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art, if it is not art itself. Metaphor is our vocabulary for connecting what we are experiencing now with what we have experienced before. It's not only how we express what we remember , it's how we interpret it - for ourselves and others. — Twyla Tharp

When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love and faith. — Twyla Tharp

In those days, male dancers were a rarer breed than women. as they are still today, A good male dancer, one as strong as we were, was very difficult to come by if you couldn't afford to pay them. — Twyla Tharp

What we want from modern dance is courage and audacity. — Twyla Tharp

The first steps of a creative act are like groping in the dark: random and chaotic, feverish and fearful, a lot of busy-ness with no apparent or definable end in sight. — Twyla Tharp

I cannot overstate how much a generous spirit contributes to good luck. Look at the luckiest people around you, the ones you envy, the ones who seem to have destiny falling habitually into their laps. If they're anything like the fortunate people I know, they're prepared, they're always working at their craft, they're alert, they involve their friends in their work, and they tend to make others feel lucky to be around them. — Twyla Tharp

There is obviously a power and a truth in action that doesn't lie, which words easily can do. — Twyla Tharp

I learned very early that an audience would relax and look at things differently if they felt they could laugh with you from time to time. There's an energy that comes through the release of tension that is laughter. — Twyla Tharp

It's always a problem, getting the curtain in at the end of the first act; having enough of a resolve so that you can bring the curtain in and then opening the show a second time is a little bizarre as a tradition. I've always preferred to go straight through. — Twyla Tharp

If you only do what you know and do it very, very well, chances are that you won't fail. You'll just stagnate, and your work will get less and less interesting, and that's failure by erosion — Twyla Tharp

There really is nothing I ever had access to that I didn't appreciate. — Twyla Tharp

Everyone has a talent. It's simply a question of good discipline, of the good fortune to have an education that meshes with that talent, and a lot of luck. — Twyla Tharp

These days, I think we could all agree that having a just-friend is not a bad thing. — Twyla Tharp

I also had a will that let me eliminate everything that stood in the way of my becoming the best dancer I could be. By a gradual process ... (I) had invested every bit of my dreams, my hopes, my energies in defining myself as a dancer. — Twyla Tharp

We're a machine and we have to be worked in the same way we have to be fed. — Twyla Tharp

I write. I have read a great deal. I enjoy books. I like the wit of languages. Even French I like. I like to be able to think in different modes. I like to be able to use the language a great deal and carry on rehearsals in French. — Twyla Tharp

There's this expression called postmodernism, which is kind of silly, and destroys a perfectly good word called modern, which now no longer means anything. — Twyla Tharp

I think that probably the moments of discovery do come from a place that is not totally organized. Order is something that we already know about. Discoveries are in a place we don't already know about. — Twyla Tharp

Everything present is included in the past somewhere; nobody's present pops out of nowhere. — Twyla Tharp

Over time, as the daily routines become second nature, discipline morphs into habit. — Twyla Tharp

I find that dancers are only well trained in ballet these days. — Twyla Tharp

We don't need to illustrate music; music illustrates itself. — Twyla Tharp

This is not a pleasant route for many young people to consider. You have to be either hopelessly passionate, or very stupid. — Twyla Tharp

You're only kidding yourself if you put creativity before craft. — Twyla Tharp

No artist is well served in thinking what will happen to their works. The best one can hope is that they'll enter the mainstream, and people will pull bits and pieces from them. — Twyla Tharp

Dance should not just divide people into audience and performers. Everyone should be a participant, whether going to classes or attending special events or rehearsals. — Twyla Tharp

In dreams, anything can be anything, and everybody can do. We can fly, we can turn upside down, we can transform into anything. — Twyla Tharp

There are so few people who can really take hold of art and sort of eat and chew it up. Somehow it's got to be held special, sacred in a corner, and if you don't do the same thing with it, if you're not equally reverential, serious, and pompous about it, well, then you're not a great artist. Who needs that? — Twyla Tharp

Usually kids who are talented have the brashness to think they can do anything, but they don't often get the chance to see how close they can come. — Twyla Tharp

Art is running away without ever leaving home. — Twyla Tharp

A young person has to start making decisions for themselves at a much earlier age than an overbearing parent allows one. — Twyla Tharp

Destiny, quite often, is a determined parent. Mozart was hardly some naive prodigy who sat down at the keyboard and, with God whispering in his ears, let music flow from his fingertips. It's a nice image for selling tickets to movies, but whether or not God has kissed your brow, you still have to work. Without learning and preparation, you won't know how to harness the power of that kiss. — Twyla Tharp

Collaboration is how most of our ancestors used to work and live, before machines came along and fragmented society. Time to plant the fields? Everybody pitched in and got it done. Harvesttime? The community raced to get the crops in before the rains came. Where were those crops stored? In barns built by teams of neighbors. In the cities, the same spirit applied. Anonymous craftsmen spent their lives building cathedrals that wouldn't be completed for generations. — Twyla Tharp

I always find that the best collaborations are when you work with people that know what they're doing, and you leave them alone to do it. — Twyla Tharp

In those long and sleepless nights when I'm unable to shake my fears sufficiently, I borrow a biblical epigraph from Dostoyevsky's The Demons: I see my fears being cast into the bodies of wild boars and hogs, and I watch them rush to a cliff where they fall to their deaths. — Twyla Tharp

When I started thinking seriously about learning the rules of narrative, I thought, 'You've learned the rules of dancing from the ballet; what's the matter with learning the laws of theater from the people who know how to do it?' — Twyla Tharp

I'm obviously always interested in the dancer who's an athlete and vice versa. I expect dancers to be in condition like an athlete is and to challenge themselves in the same way, to the same physical degree. — Twyla Tharp

Never worry that rote exercises aimed at developing skills will suffocate creativity. At the same time, it's important to recognize that demonstrating great technique is not the same as being creative. — Twyla Tharp

Dance is the most fundamental of all art forms. — Twyla Tharp

In the end all collaborations are love stories. — Twyla Tharp

When Homer composed the Iliad and Odyssey, he was drawing on centuries of history and folklore handed down by oral tradition. When Nicolas Poussin painted The Rape of the Sabine Women, he was re-creating Roman history. When Marcel Proust dipped his petites madeleines into his tea, the taste and aroma set off a flood of memories and emotions from which modern literature has still not recovered. — Twyla Tharp

The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language. — Twyla Tharp

The routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightening bold of inspiration, maybe more. And this routine is available to everyone. — Twyla Tharp

When I'm in the studio, when I'm warm, when I'm what people call improvising, I feel a very special connection. I feel the most right. I don't want to become too mystic about this, but things feel as though they're in the best order at that particular moment. — Twyla Tharp

I'm not interested in seeing dance die. It's not to my advantage. Nor is it to our culture's advantage or anybody else's. — Twyla Tharp

When dancing is right, the movement possesss a logic common to us all, an inevitability that takes it beyond the personal and egocentric and makes of it classical art. — Twyla Tharp

To survive, you've got to keep wheedling your way. You can't just sit there and fight against odds when it's not going to work. You have to turn a corner, dig a hole, go through a tunnel - and find a way to keep moving. — Twyla Tharp

Balzac loved courtesans. They were independent women, and in the 19th century, that was a breed that was just evolving. — Twyla Tharp

Doing is better than not doing, and if you do something badly you'll learn to do it better. — Twyla Tharp

You only need one good reason to commit to an idea, not four hundred. But if you have four hundred reasons to say yes and one reason to say no, the answer is probably no. — Twyla Tharp

You don't have a really good idea until you combine two little ideas. — Twyla Tharp

Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. If you're generous to someone, if you do something to help him out, you are in effect making him lucky. This is important. It's like inviting yourself into a community of good fortune. — Twyla Tharp

Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it. — Twyla Tharp

Milos Forman is a great director, Jim Brooks is a wonderful writer and director. — Twyla Tharp

Don't sign on for more problems than you must. Resist the temptation to involve yourself in other people's zones of expertise and responsibility. Monitor troublesome situations if you need to, but don't insert yourself unless you're running out of time and a solution is nowhere in sight. In short, stifle your inner control freak. — Twyla Tharp

There are very few critics who have historical context or authority. — Twyla Tharp

Walt Disney was a master of the human psychology. His sense of timing, sense of speed. In a sense, those cartoons are like Rorschach tests. — Twyla Tharp

I think people want very much to simplify their lives enough so that they can control the things that make it possible to sleep at night. — Twyla Tharp

I work because I have issues and questions and feelings and thoughts that I want to have a look at. I'm not in need of, or wanting, particularly, to know what other folk are up to. — Twyla Tharp

You can keep on chewing gum for ten hours, but after about a minute and a half you've got all the good out of it. — Twyla Tharp

Counterpoint is a component that gives real energy, and it is about optimism. — Twyla Tharp

I always tell students that you've got to be practical. You do not need a dream. You need a purpose, something you can wake up to in the morning when the dream is dissipated. — Twyla Tharp

Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering. Combining the two is the essence of the creative life. — Twyla Tharp

I understand things that are American, for better or worse. — Twyla Tharp

Dance is the stepchild of the arts. — Twyla Tharp

The content and thematic materials of dance is, of itself, like boxing. You play tennis and baseball. But boxing is not a sport you play: you stand up and do it. — Twyla Tharp

I would have to challenge the term, modern dance. I don't really use that term in relation to my work. I simply think of it as dancing. I think of it as moving. — Twyla Tharp

Life is about moving, it's about change. And when things stop doing that they're dead. — Twyla Tharp

This is the strange thing: Dancers don't age. — Twyla Tharp

Unfortunately, I think we've probably all had the experience that if we're in a relationship where one of the partners is doing it 'my' way, that relationship is not going to survive. — Twyla Tharp

You may wonder which came first: the skill or the hard work. But that's a moot point. The Zen master cleans his own studio. So should you. — Twyla Tharp

At the ballet classes I took when I first came to New York, I would see great dancers like Cynthia Gregory and Lupe Serrano. I would look at them and study what they could do, and what I couldn't do. And then I'd think maybe they should try what I could do. — Twyla Tharp

Whom the gods wish to destroy, they give unlimited resources. — Twyla Tharp

I don't hate language. I have my own language, but I also enjoy the English language. Obviously, you don't read a lot of literature and not care about language. — Twyla Tharp