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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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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Would
Challenges
Think
Simply
Thinking
Modern
Term
Moving
Dancing
Use
Relation
Work
Challenge
Really
Dance

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

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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
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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
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Limits are a secret blessing, and bounty can be a curse.
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In order to be creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative.
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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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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
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Just when you arrive at the apex of your skills, it's time to retire. But as it turned out, I decided that since it was the thing that I felt I did best, I owed it to all that be to pursue it.
Twyla Tharp
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I began ear training when I was about six months old. My mother was a concert pianist, and she started all of her children with music before they were a year old. Then she began to see that I had a musical gift...
Twyla Tharp
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In the not-for-profit world, there can be wastefulness because there's not the desperate urgency of when you're on a clock.
Twyla Tharp
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You're only kidding yourself if you put creativity before craft.
Twyla Tharp
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A commission is an invitation to fall in love.
Twyla Tharp
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Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits.
Twyla Tharp
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This is not a pleasant route for many young people to consider. You have to be either hopelessly passionate, or very stupid.
Twyla Tharp
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It's vital to establish some rituals-automatic but decisive patterns of behavior-at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way.
Twyla Tharp
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When creativity has become your habit when you've learned to manage time, resources, expectations, and the demands of others when you understand the value and place of validation, continuity, and purity of purpose, then you're on the way to an artist's ultimate goal the achievement of mastery.
Twyla Tharp
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Judgment is not my business. Existing is my business.
Twyla Tharp
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Every work of art needs a spine – an underlying theme, a motive for coming into existence. It doesn't have to be apparent to the audience. But you need it at the start of the creative process to guide you and keep you going.
Twyla Tharp
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Dancers are allowed, indeed encouraged, to remain children forever.
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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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.
Twyla Tharp