Quote

There are so few people who can really take hold of art and sort of eat and chew it up. Somehow it's got to be held special, sacred in a corner, and if you don't do the same thing with it, if you're not equally reverential, serious, and pompous about it, well, then you're not a great artist. Who needs that?

Twyla Tharp

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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Take
Hold
Chew
Great
Serious
Pompous
Needs
Special
Corner
Thing
Sort
Equally
Really
Artist
Corners
People
Art
Held
Wells
Somehow
Well
Sacred
Reverential

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

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Dance has never been a particularly easy life, and everybody knows that.
Twyla Tharp
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As people who have commitments and obligations, we try to blockade emotions and go on our course towards excellence, and that's a lie. I've definitely paid a price. Everything is an exchange.
Twyla Tharp
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Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits. That's it in a nutshell ... In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative.
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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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Never worry that rote exercises aimed at developing skills will suffocate creativity. At the same time, it's important to recognize that demonstrating great technique is not the same as being creative.
Twyla Tharp
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To embrace luck, you have to enhance your tolerance for ambiguity.
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.
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I'm not one who divides music, dance or art into various categories. Either something works, or it doesn't.
Twyla Tharp
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Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. If you're generous to someone, if you do something to help him out, you are in effect making him lucky. This is important. It's like inviting yourself into a community of good fortune.
Twyla Tharp
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When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love and faith.
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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Mastery is an elusive concept. You never know when you achieve it absolutely and it may not help you to feel you've attained it. We can recognize it more readily in others than we can in ourselves. We have to discover our own definition of it.
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
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The thing about creativity is, people are going to laugh at it. Get over it.
Twyla Tharp
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In those days, male dancers were a rarer breed than women. as they are still today, A good male dancer, one as strong as we were, was very difficult to come by if you couldn't afford to pay them.
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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You can keep on chewing gum for ten hours, but after about a minute and a half you've got all the good out of it.
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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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