Quote

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

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
Future
Certain
Enough
Breathing
Make
Commit
Life
Projects
Emotional
Space

More quotes by Twyla Tharp

Image
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
Image
There are as many forms of memory as there are ways of perceiving, and every one of them is worth mining for inspiration.
Twyla Tharp
Image
I never studied with Balanchine, but his work was very important to me.
Twyla Tharp
Image
Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits.
Twyla Tharp
Image
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
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
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
Dancing is like bank robbery, it takes split-second timing.
Twyla Tharp
Image
Doing is better than not doing, and if you do something badly you'll learn to do it better.
Twyla Tharp
Image
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
Image
Whether it's a painter finding his way each morning to the easel, or a medical researcher returning daily to the laboratory, the routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bolt of inspiration, maybe more.
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
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.
Twyla Tharp
Image
Creativity requires quite a lot of faith - not just in yourself but also in the knowledge that you have the right to proceed, even when you may not know exactly what you're doing.
Twyla Tharp
Image
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
Image
I was interested in becoming a show dancer, for which I tried, but I'm not tall enough.
Twyla Tharp
Image
There's this expression called postmodernism, which is kind of silly, and destroys a perfectly good word called modern, which now no longer means anything.
Twyla Tharp
Image
Every work of art needs a spine – an underlying theme, a motive for coming into existence. It doesn't have to be apparent to the audience. But you need it at the start of the creative process to guide you and keep you going.
Twyla Tharp
Image
I have always felt one of the things dance should do - its business being so clearly physical - is challenge the culture's gender stereotypes.
Twyla Tharp
Image
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.
Twyla Tharp