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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.

Twyla Tharp

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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Dancing
Havens
Haven
Audience
Intimidate
Doesn
Elitist
Form
Intimidating
Wanted
Audiences
Mean
Excellent

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

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You have to believe there's something at the other side. And you have to have faith in yourself. You have to think that you have the tools to accomplish it.
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The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.
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I've survived inattention. I hope to God I survive attention.
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I walk into a large white room. It's a dance studio in midtown Manhattan. The room is clean, virtually spotless if you don’t count the thousands of skid marks and footprints left there by dancers rehearsing. Other than the mirrors, the boom box, the skid marks, and me, the room is empty.
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Doing is better than not doing, and if you do something badly you'll learn to do it better.
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The formal education that I received made little sense to me.
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dance is simply the refinement of human movement - walking, running, and jumping. We are all experts. There should be no art form more accessible than dance, yet no art is more mystifying in the public imagination.
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The great ones never take fundamentals for granted.
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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.
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More often than not I've found, a rut is a consequence of sticking to tried and tested methods that don't take into account how you or the world has changed.
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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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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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I've always found it necessity to strip away everything but the most fundamental ways to work - the rest is style.
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Whether it's a painter finding his way each morning to the easel, or a medical researcher returning daily to the laboratory, the routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bolt of inspiration, maybe more.
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Modern dancers should be doing things no one else is doing, and it should come from the gut.
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I do believe that when dancing is right, the movement possesses a logic common to us all.
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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.
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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
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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
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Without the little ideas, there are no big ideas.
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