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Judgment is not my business. Existing is my business.

Twyla Tharp

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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Existing
Judgment
Business

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

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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
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You're only kidding yourself if you put creativity before craft.
Twyla Tharp
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My mother was the first woman in the county in Indiana where we were born, in Jay County, to have a college degree. She was educated as a pianist and she wanted to concertize, but when the war came she was married, had a family, so she started teaching.
Twyla Tharp
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I had received my first establishment grants in response to applications filed the year before. To the pages of baffling forms I had simply attached a handwritten note saying, 'I make dances, not applications. Send the money. Love, Twyla.
Twyla Tharp
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If you're speaking of love, you really must include the element of uncertainty - and perhaps it's best approached as the art of constant maintenance.
Twyla Tharp
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Limits are a secret blessing, and bounty can be a curse.
Twyla Tharp
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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
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Creativity is an act of defiance.
Twyla Tharp
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You double your intensity with skill.
Twyla Tharp
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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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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
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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
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We get into ruts when we run with the first idea that pops into our head, not the last one.
Twyla Tharp
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Obligation is a flimsy base for creativity, way down the list behind passion, courage, instinct, and the desire to do something great.
Twyla Tharp
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It was not until I had graduated from college that I made a professional commitment to it. Frankly, I didn't think it wise. I was my own interior parental force, and it's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.
Twyla Tharp
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You don't have a really good idea until you combine two little ideas.
Twyla Tharp
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Solitude is an unavoidable part of creativity. Self-reliance is a happy by-product.
Twyla Tharp
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In the end all collaborations are love stories.
Twyla Tharp
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I have always felt one of the things dance should do - its business being so clearly physical - is challenge the culture's gender stereotypes.
Twyla Tharp
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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.
Twyla Tharp