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I had received my first establishment grants in response to applications filed the year before. To the pages of baffling forms I had simply attached a handwritten note saying, 'I make dances, not applications. Send the money. Love, Twyla.

Twyla Tharp

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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Money
Send
Applications
Form
Notes
Dances
Firsts
Forms
Attached
First
Response
Grants
Years
Pages
Note
Handwritten
Make
Simply
Application
Filed
Love
Saying
Received
Baffling
Year
Establishment
Assertiveness

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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Dancing is like bank robbery, it takes split-second timing.
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The way I enjoyed spending time most was dancing. That's from the time I was a very small child, When I was 4 or 5 years old, I remember already having a regime. It was the way I always identified myself.
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Before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box
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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.
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Art is running away without ever leaving home.
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I have not wanted to intimidate audiences. I have not wanted my dancing to be an elitist form. That doesn't mean I haven't wanted it to be excellent.
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I'm not one who divides music, dance or art into various categories. Either something works, or it doesn't.
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You don't get into the mood to create – it's discipline.
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I feel I can handle the architecture of dance as well as anybody.
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I have always felt one of the things dance should do - its business being so clearly physical - is challenge the culture's gender stereotypes.
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By making the start of the sequence automatic, they replace doubt and fear with comfort and routine.
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You double your intensity with skill.
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I was interested in becoming a show dancer, for which I tried, but I'm not tall enough.
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Every dance I make is a dive into this well of ancient memory.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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