Quote

The disasteris not the money, although the money will be missed. The disaster is the disrespect--this belief that the arts are dispensable, that they're not critical to a culture's existence.

Twyla Tharp

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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Existence
Politics
Dispensable
Belief
Disrespect
Culture
Missed
Art
Arts
Money
Disaster
Although
Critical

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

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I was interested in becoming a show dancer, for which I tried, but I'm not tall enough.
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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Modern dancers should be doing things no one else is doing, and it should come from the gut.
Twyla Tharp
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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.
Twyla Tharp
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I've always found it necessity to strip away everything but the most fundamental ways to work - the rest is style.
Twyla Tharp
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Men and women are very different athletes, and frankly, I didn't want to deal with the male potential.
Twyla Tharp
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I've survived inattention. I hope to God I survive attention.
Twyla Tharp
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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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I’m much stronger than most women. Consequently, when I work with men, or when I’m partnered by men... We can actually go into kinds of movement that haven’t been available before, simply because I’ve strengthened myself as a woman, not because I’ve weakened him.
Twyla Tharp
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I've always had to keep the walls in place, and the only way to do that is to keep yourself constantly occupied... From the time I was 8 years old, until I went to college, I worked... There was no social life.
Twyla Tharp
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I had always seen myself as a star I wanted to be a galaxy.
Twyla Tharp
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You don't have a really good idea until you combine two little ideas.
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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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.
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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A dancer's life is all about repetition.
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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I never studied with Balanchine, but his work was very important to me.
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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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.
Twyla Tharp