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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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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Consider
Dance
Stupid
Hopelessly
Either
Route
Young
Routes
Many
Ballet
People
Pleasant
Passionate

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

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Dance has never been a particularly easy life, and everybody knows that.
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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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A dancer's life is all about repetition.
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The art of these Fifties movies was in sustaining forever the moment before sex.
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Art is an investigation.
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I learned very early that an audience would relax and look at things differently if they felt they could laugh with you from time to time. There's an energy that comes through the release of tension that is laughter.
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I was valedictorian. Did I enjoy going to school? I hated it. It wasn't a choice on my part, it was expected.
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My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education, which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity, and there really was no judgment, which is a good thing for someone who still thinks of themselves as a very basic American.
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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.
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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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Creativity is an act of defiance.
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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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.
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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Doing is better than not doing, and if you do something badly you'll learn to do it better.
Twyla Tharp
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It's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.
Twyla Tharp
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The more you know, the better you can imagine.
Twyla Tharp
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I have learned over the years that you should never save for two meetings what you can accomplish in one.
Twyla Tharp
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I've always thought my creative life began the moment my mother called me Twyla.
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