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I do everything I know how in a dance.

Twyla Tharp

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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Dancing
Dance
Everything

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

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Life is about moving, it’s about change. And when things stop doing that they’re dead.
Twyla Tharp
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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
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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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Judgment is not my business. Existing is my business.
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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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.
Twyla Tharp
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I've always had to keep the walls in place, and the only way to do that is to keep yourself constantly occupied... From the time I was 8 years old, until I went to college, I worked... There was no social life.
Twyla Tharp
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I do believe that when dancing is right, the movement possesses a logic common to us all.
Twyla Tharp
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Traveling the paths of greatness, even in someone else's footprints, is a vital means to acquiring skill.
Twyla Tharp
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The art of these Fifties movies was in sustaining forever the moment before sex.
Twyla Tharp
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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.
Twyla Tharp
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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
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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
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I never studied with Balanchine, but his work was very important to me.
Twyla Tharp
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I have to feel that each thing I've learned I can push to another point next time. I'm not very good with repetition. I would rather not work than feel that repetition is the order of the day.
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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When you're in a rut, you have to question everything except your ability to get out of it.
Twyla Tharp
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The more you fail in private, the less you will fail in public.
Twyla Tharp
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What I do remember is visualization of the sound of music, seeing bodies in movement in relation to how music sounded, because my mother practiced at the keyboard a lot and I also went to her lessons. As a two year old, three year old I remember seeing things in movement.
Twyla Tharp