Quote

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

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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Helping
Clearly
Compensations
Anything
Later
Effortlessly
Even
Outside
Gliding
Thing
Focus
Thereof
Life
Issues
Compensation
Since
Supportive
Help
Define
Interesting
Arise

More quotes by 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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Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering. Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.
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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Ultimately there is no such thing as failure. There are lessons learned in different ways.
Twyla Tharp
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In order to be creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative.....A lot of habitually creative people have preparation rituals linked to the setting in which they choose to start their day. By putting themselves into that environment, they begin their creative day.
Twyla Tharp
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It is extremely arrogant and very foolish to think that you can ever outwit your audience.
Twyla Tharp
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Confidence is a trait that has to be earned honestly and refreshed constantly you have to work as hard to protect your skills as you did to develop them. . . The one thing that creative souls around the world have in common is that they all have to practice to maintain their skills. Art is a vast democracy of habit.
Twyla Tharp
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No one is born with skill. It is developed through exercise, through repetition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time.
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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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
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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
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When you stimulate your body, your brain comes alive in ways you can't simulate in a sedentary position.
Twyla Tharp
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I don't believe in rushing and saying this is done and over with. That form of rebellion doesn't make sense to me. I've always attempted to familiarize myself with the traditions, and consider that a responsibility of the artist.
Twyla Tharp
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I'm willing to be regarded as a tyrant to keep my vision intact.
Twyla Tharp
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In dreams, anything can be anything, and everybody can do. We can fly, we can turn upside down, we can transform into anything.
Twyla Tharp
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My greatest fear in working is always the end. Lately I have taken to tricking myself into finishing by leaving a hole in the middle somewhere, then stitching the two pieces together - the Union Pacific approach.
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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Every dance I make is a dive into this well of ancient memory.
Twyla Tharp
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Playwrights have texts, composers have scores, painters and sculptors have the residue of those activities, and dance is traditionally an ephemeral, effervescent, here-today-gone-tomorrow kind of thing.
Twyla Tharp
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There's a paradox in the notion that creativity should be a habit. We think of creativity as a way of keeping everything fresh and new, while habit implies routine and repetition. That paradox intrigues me because it occupies the place where creativity and skill rub up against each other.
Twyla Tharp