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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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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Great
Obligation
Something
Instinct
Way
Creativity
Behinds
Courage
Flimsy
Behind
Base
Passion
List
Desire
Lists

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

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I don't think that scheduling is uncreative. I think that structure is required for creativity.
Twyla Tharp
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You may wonder which came first: the skill or the hard work. But that's a moot point. The Zen master cleans his own studio. So should you.
Twyla Tharp
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Ultimately there is no such thing as failure. There are lessons learned in different ways.
Twyla Tharp
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The disasteris not the money, although the money will be missed. The disaster is the disrespect--this belief that the arts are dispensable, that they're not critical to a culture's existence.
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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Our ability to grow is directly proportional to an ability to entertain the uncomfortable.
Twyla Tharp
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Don’t sign on for more problems than you must. Resist the temptation to involve yourself in other people’s zones of expertise and responsibility. Monitor troublesome situations if you need to, but don’t insert yourself unless you’re running out of time and a solution is nowhere in sight. In short, stifle your inner control freak.
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
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Art is running away without ever leaving home.
Twyla Tharp
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I often say that in making dances I can make a world where I think things are done morally, done democratically, done honestly.
Twyla Tharp
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Dance is the stepchild of the arts.
Twyla Tharp
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A young person has to start making decisions for themselves at a much earlier age than an overbearing parent allows one.
Twyla Tharp
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I’m much stronger than most women. Consequently, when I work with men, or when I’m partnered by men... We can actually go into kinds of movement that haven’t been available before, simply because I’ve strengthened myself as a woman, not because I’ve weakened him.
Twyla Tharp
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We're a machine and we have to be worked in the same way we have to be fed.
Twyla Tharp
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I have a sort of tactility about music. I go into record stores and just run my fingers over it, the spines.
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 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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You're only kidding yourself if you put creativity before craft.
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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Well, Mozart is extraordinary not only in that he became virtuoso along the lines of his father, but that he had that compositional gift, that melodic gift. By the time he was four, he was doing piano concertos with harmony in the background.
Twyla Tharp