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Perfect practice makes perfect.

Twyla Tharp

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Twyla Tharp
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: July 1
Ballet Dancer
Choreographer
Dancer
Writer
Portland
Indiana
Practice
Perfect
Makes

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

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Reading, conversation, environment, culture, heroes, mentors, nature – all are lottery tickets for creativity. Scratch away at them and you’ll find out how big a prize you’ve won.
Twyla Tharp
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I have to feel that each thing I've learned I can push to another point next time. I'm not very good with repetition. I would rather not work than feel that repetition is the order of the day.
Twyla Tharp
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I learned very early that an audience would relax and look at things differently if they felt they could laugh with you from time to time. There's an energy that comes through the release of tension that is laughter.
Twyla Tharp
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I was fortunate to love men, so I could put them on stage and make roles for them, and move through their bodies in a way that they enjoy doing...
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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Whenever I feel I'm working in a groove it's invariably because I feel I am being the benefactor in the situation rather than the beneficiary. I am sharing my art with others, lending my craft to theirs, interest-free with no IOU.
Twyla Tharp
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You only need one good reason to commit to an idea, not four hundred. But if you have four hundred reasons to say yes and one reason to say no, the answer is probably no.
Twyla Tharp
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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.
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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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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Nobody likes to see that which they've invested in disappear from the face of the earth before they've even died. This is not cool. We can now see what the landmarks, in fact are.
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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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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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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Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art.
Twyla Tharp
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I think Tolstoy had an unbelievably complicated relationship with women.
Twyla Tharp
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I've always thought my creative life began the moment my mother called me Twyla.
Twyla Tharp
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The great ones never take fundamentals for granted.
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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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