Twyla Tharp famous quotes

Ultimately there is no such thing as failure. There are lessons learned in different ways.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Lesson Learned #Lessons #Way

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Music #Running #Witty

Art is an investigation.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Art #Investigation #Art Is

The content and thematic materials of dance is, of itself, like boxing. You play tennis and baseball. But boxing is not a sport you play: you stand up and do it.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Sports #Baseball #Play

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

#Dance #Running #Art

The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Creativity #Nuts #Innovation

Life is about moving, it’s about change. And when things stop doing that they’re dead.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Life And Love #Moving #Life Is

I would have to challenge the term, modern dance. I don't really use that term in relation to my work. I simply think of it as dancing. I think of it as moving.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Dance #Moving #Thinking

The irony of multitasking is that it's exhausting: when you're doing two or three things simultaneously, you use more energy than the sum of energy required to do each task independently. You're also cheating yourself because your're not doing anything excellently. You're compromising your virtuosity. In the words of T. S. Elliot, you're 'distracted from distractions by distractions'.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Cheating #Two #Tasks

A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I'm beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Dance #Wall #Thinking

In dreams, anything can be anything, and everybody can do. We can fly, we can turn upside down, we can transform into anything.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Dream #Upside Down #Turns

If you only do what you know and do it very, very well, chances are that you won't fail. You'll just stagnate, and your work will get less and less interesting, and that's failure by erosion
-- Twyla Tharp

#Erosion #Interesting #Chance

Our ability to grow is directly proportional to an ability to entertain the uncomfortable.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Inspirational #Uncomfortable #Ability

You don't get into the mood to create – it's discipline.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Discipline #Mood

It is extremely arrogant and very foolish to think that you can ever outwit your audience.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Dance #Stupid #Thinking

I do everything I know how in a dance.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Dance

I think people want very much to simplify their lives enough so that they can control the things that make it possible to sleep at night.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Sleep #Night #Thinking

I have the wherewithal to challenge myself for my entire life. That's a great gift.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Challenges

I read for growth, firmly believing that what you are today and what you will be in five years depends on two things: the people you meet and the books you read.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Book #Believe #Years

Creativity is an act of defiance.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Art #Creativity #Writing

Whom the gods wish to destroy, they give unlimited resources.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Giving #Wish #Unlimited

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

#Ideas #Answers #Four

My mother was the first woman in the county in Indiana where we were born, in Jay County, to have a college degree. She was educated as a pianist and she wanted to concertize, but when the war came she was married, had a family, so she started teaching.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Mother #War #Teaching

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

#Dance #Gone #Ephemeral

Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Art #Creativity #Habit

You have to believe there's something at the other side. And you have to have faith in yourself. You have to think that you have the tools to accomplish it.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Dance #Believe #Thinking

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

#Inspirational #Creativity #Thinking

Usually kids who are talented have the brashness to think they can do anything, but they don't often get the chance to see how close they can come.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Dance #Kids #Thinking

You may wonder which came first: the skill or the hard work. But that's a moot point. The Zen master cleans his own studio. So should you.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Hard Work #Skills #May

When you're in a rut, you have to question everything except your ability to get out of it.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Ruts #Ability

Before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box
-- Twyla Tharp

#Thinking #Conformity #Boxes

Creativity is more about taking the facts, fictions, and feelings we store away and finding new ways to connect them. What we're talking about here is metaphor. Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art, if it is not art itself. Metaphor is our vocabulary for connecting what we are experiencing now with what we have experienced before. It's not only how we express what we remember , it's how we interpret it - for ourselves and others.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Art #Creativity #Talking

Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Happiness #Creativity #Entrepreneur

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

#Art #Creative #Needs

It's vital to establish some rituals-automatic but decisive patterns of behavior-at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Giving Up #Creative #Patterns

I cannot overstate how much a generous spirit contributes to good luck. Look at the luckiest people around you, the ones you envy, the ones who seem to have destiny falling habitually into their laps. If they're anything like the fortunate people I know, they're prepared, they're always working at their craft, they're alert, they involve their friends in their work, and they tend to make others feel lucky to be around them.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Fall #Good Luck #Destiny

I'm not one who divides music, dance or art into various categories. Either something works, or it doesn't.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Dance #Art #Categories

I think that anyone who's pushed to do the very best that they can is privileged. It's a luxury.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Thinking #Luxury

If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Art #Bridges #Skills

To make real change, you have to be well anchored - not only in the belief that it can be done, but also in some pretty real ways about who you are and what you can do.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Real #Done #Way

Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Art #Metaphor

Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft.  Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering.  Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Passion #Essence #Skills

I work because I have issues and questions and feelings and thoughts that I want to have a look at. I'm not in need of, or wanting, particularly, to know what other folk are up to.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Issues #Feelings #Want

Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Optimistic #Optimism #Experience

Judgment is not my business. Existing is my business.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Judgment

Dancing is like bank robbery, it takes split-second timing.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Dance #Dancing #Splits

Destiny, quite often, is a determined parent. Mozart was hardly some naive prodigy who sat down at the keyboard and, with God whispering in his ears, let music flow from his fingertips. It's a nice image for selling tickets to movies, but whether or not God has kissed your brow, you still have to work. Without learning and preparation, you won't know how to harness the power of that kiss.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Nice #Kissing #Destiny

I have learned over the years that you should never save for two meetings what you can accomplish in one.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Years #Two #Should

We get into ruts when we run with the first idea that pops into our head, not the last one.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Running #Ideas #Lasts

But obligation, I eventually saw, is not the same as commitment, and it's certainly not an acceptable reason to stick with something that isn't working
-- Twyla Tharp

#Commitment #Saws #Sticks

One clear difference between art and commercial work is that commercial work is exploitive: the work may be high quality but the intention is to sell product or tickets. Art exists with or without ticket sales.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Art #Differences #Quality

Art is running away without ever leaving home.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Running #Art #Home

Living had little use for me other than how it could be funneled into dance.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Passion #Littles #Use

Everything that happens in my day is a transaction between the external world and my internal world. Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it. Without the time and effort invested in getting ready to create, you can be hit by a thunderbolt and it'll just leave you stunned.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Inspirational #Creativity #Effort

The routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightening bold of inspiration, maybe more. And this routine is available to everyone.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Inspirational #Creative #Routine

A dancer's life is all about repetition.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Dancer #Life Is #Repetition

I can't emphasize this idea enough. Getting involved with your collaborator's problems almost always distracts you from your own. That can be tempting. That can be a relief. But it usually leads to disaster.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Ideas #Relief #Problem

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

#Creativity #Exercise #Skills

It takes skill to bring something you've imagined into the world: to use words to create believable lives, to select the colors and textures of paint to represent a haystack at sunset, to combine ingredients to make a flavorful dish.  No one is born with that skill.  It is developed through exercise, through repitition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding.  And it takes time. . . . If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Art #Sunset #Exercise

Solitude is an unavoidable part of creativity. Self-reliance is a happy by-product.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Creativity #Self #Solitude

By making the start of the sequence automatic, they replace doubt and fear with comfort and routine.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Doubt #Comfort #Routine

Energy and time are finite resources; conserving them is very important.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Important #Energy #Resources

Later in life, one of the compensations is gliding effortlessly into focus in a thing. Since it is who we are, anything that is not the focus or supportive thereof is just not us. Even outside issues, when they arise, are interesting in that they only help define the focus more clearly.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Issues #Interesting #Focus

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.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Running #Responsibility #Sight

I'm willing to be regarded as a tyrant to keep my vision intact.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Tyrants #Vision #Tyranny

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

#Art #Crafts #Lending

Alone is a fact, a condition where no one else is around. Lonely is how you feel about that.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Lonely #Loneliness #Facts

Whether or not God has kissed your brow, you still have to work. Without learning and preparation, you won't know how to harness the power of that kiss.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Kissing #Preparation #Harness

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

#Art #People #Special

In the not-for-profit world, there can be wastefulness because there's not the desperate urgency of when you're on a clock.
-- Twyla Tharp

#World #Desperate #Clock

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

#Inspirational #Exercise #Reflection

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

#Creativity #Writing #Order

In the end all collaborations are love stories.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Stories #Collaboration #Love Story

With each piece I've completed I have worked to make it intact, and each of them has been an equal high. It's like children. A mother refuses to pick out one as a favorite, and I can't do any better with the dances.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Mother #Children #Pieces

What I do remember is visualization of the sound of music, seeing bodies in movement in relation to how music sounded, because my mother practiced at the keyboard a lot and I also went to her lessons. As a two year old, three year old I remember seeing things in movement.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Mother #Years #Two Year Olds

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

#Stupid #Silly #Mean

Well, Mozart is extraordinary not only in that he became virtuoso along the lines of his father, but that he had that compositional gift, that melodic gift. By the time he was four, he was doing piano concertos with harmony in the background.
-- Twyla Tharp

#Father #Piano #Four