Quote

The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.

Twyla Tharp

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Without
Needs
Translated
Way
Ballet
Received
Story
Language
Tell
Stories

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

Image
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
Image
dance is simply the refinement of human movement - walking, running, and jumping. We are all experts. There should be no art form more accessible than dance, yet no art is more mystifying in the public imagination.
Twyla Tharp
Image
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
Image
We get into ruts when we run with the first idea that pops into our head, not the last one.
Twyla Tharp
Image
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
Image
The first steps of a creative act are like groping in the dark: random and chaotic, feverish and fearful, a lot of busy-ness with no apparent or definable end in sight.
Twyla Tharp
Image
In the future, I will make certain that I commit to projects so there's enough breathing space for me to have an emotional life.
Twyla Tharp
Image
Art is running away without ever leaving home.
Twyla Tharp
Image
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
Image
If you're speaking of love, you really must include the element of uncertainty - and perhaps it's best approached as the art of constant maintenance.
Twyla Tharp
Image
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
Image
In terms of individuals who actually inspired me, very few of the academic people that I had access to had that power over me. Maybe it's simply because I wasn't that committed to geometry.
Twyla Tharp
Image
The formal education that I received made little sense to me.
Twyla Tharp
Image
That's what improvising is like for me. There's no tollbooth between my impulse and my action.
Twyla Tharp
Image
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
Image
By making the start of the sequence automatic, they replace doubt and fear with comfort and routine.
Twyla Tharp
Image
I've always thought my creative life began the moment my mother called me Twyla.
Twyla Tharp
Image
I was valedictorian. Did I enjoy going to school? I hated it. It wasn't a choice on my part, it was expected.
Twyla Tharp
Image
Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art.
Twyla Tharp
Image
Solitude is an unavoidable part of creativity. Self-reliance is a happy by-product.
Twyla Tharp