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A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet, that the two disciplines were totally separate, and if you did one, you couldn’t do the other. I’m beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.

Twyla Tharp

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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Thinking
Totally
People
Dance
Disciplines
Beginning
Insisted
Couldn
Unhealthy
Wall
Ballet
Modern
Walls
Things
Dancer
Think
Separate

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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.
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The more you know, the better you can imagine.
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I have not wanted to intimidate audiences. I have not wanted my dancing to be an elitist form. That doesn't mean I haven't wanted it to be excellent.
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Creativity requires quite a lot of faith - not just in yourself but also in the knowledge that you have the right to proceed, even when you may not know exactly what you're doing.
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As people who have commitments and obligations, we try to blockade emotions and go on our course towards excellence, and that's a lie. I've definitely paid a price. Everything is an exchange.
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I think that anyone who's pushed to do the very best that they can is privileged. It's a luxury.
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Ultimately there is no such thing as failure. There are lessons learned in different ways.
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I was fortunate to love men, so I could put them on stage and make roles for them, and move through their bodies in a way that they enjoy doing...
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Confidence is a trait that has to be earned honestly and refreshed constantly you have to work as hard to protect your skills as you did to develop them. . . The one thing that creative souls around the world have in common is that they all have to practice to maintain their skills. Art is a vast democracy of habit.
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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.
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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.
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I always, somehow, knew that I was going to dance.
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Later in life, one of the compensations is gliding effortlessly into focus in a thing. Since it is who we are, anything that is not the focus or supportive thereof is just not us. Even outside issues, when they arise, are interesting in that they only help define the focus more clearly.
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when the time came I would do battle with my mother for the right to sit at the center of my own life.
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I read for growth, firmly believing that what you are today and what you will be in five years depends on two things: the people you meet and the books you read.
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Our ability to grow is directly proportional to an ability to entertain the uncomfortable.
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The formal education that I received made little sense to me.
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Skill is how you close the gap between what you can see in your mind's eye and what you can produce the more skill you have, the more sophisticated and accomplished your ideas can be. With absolute skill comes absolute confidence.
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That's what improvising is like for me. There's no tollbooth between my impulse and my action.
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The blank space can be humbling. But I've faced it my whole professional life. It's my job. It's also my calling. Bottom line: Filling this empty space constitutes my identity.
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