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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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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Wrong
Establish
Process
Ritual
Back
Vital
Giving
Turning
Going
Patterns
Rituals
Way
Behavior
Automatic
Beginning
Decisive
Creative
Peril

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

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if you want to create art, you'd best have a deep belief in yourself and no ulterior motives.
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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.
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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.
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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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Skill is how you close the gap between what you can see in your mind's eye and what you can produce the more skill you have, the more sophisticated and accomplished your ideas can be. With absolute skill comes absolute confidence.
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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I was privileged to be able to study a year with Martha Graham, the last year she was teaching.
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The necessity to constantly turn in an excellent performance, to be absolutely wedded to this dedication and this ideal means that as a child you're going to pay for it personally.
Twyla Tharp
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The blank space can be humbling. But I've faced it my whole professional life. It's my job. It's also my calling. Bottom line: Filling this empty space constitutes my identity.
Twyla Tharp
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I write. I have read a great deal. I enjoy books. I like the wit of languages. Even French I like. I like to be able to think in different modes. I like to be able to use the language a great deal and carry on rehearsals in French.
Twyla Tharp
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Art is running away without ever leaving home.
Twyla Tharp
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The routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightening bold of inspiration, maybe more. And this routine is available to everyone.
Twyla Tharp
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If you only do what you know and do it very, very well, chances are that you won't fail. You'll just stagnate, and your work will get less and less interesting, and that's failure by erosion
Twyla Tharp
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I don't mean this, but I'm going to say it anyway. I don't really think of pop art and serious art as being that far apart.
Twyla Tharp
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Whenever I feel I'm working in a groove it's invariably because I feel I am being the benefactor in the situation rather than the beneficiary. I am sharing my art with others, lending my craft to theirs, interest-free with no IOU.
Twyla Tharp
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To embrace luck, you have to enhance your tolerance for ambiguity.
Twyla Tharp
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I repeat the wake-up, the workout, the quick shower, the breakfast of three hard-boiled egg whites and a cup of coffee, the hour to make my morning calls and deal with correspondence, the two hours of stretching and working out ideas by myself in the studio ... That's my day, every day. A dancer's life is all about repetition.
Twyla Tharp
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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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Energy and time are finite resources conserving them is very important.
Twyla Tharp
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Any comic is a tragic soul. Comedy is one of the things that allows one to survive. Particularly if one has been in the process of separating off the emotions, it's one place you can process them.
Twyla Tharp