Twyla Tharp Quotes
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I never studied with Balanchine, but his work was very important to me.
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If you're speaking of love, you really must include the element of uncertainty - and perhaps it's best approached as the art of constant maintenance.
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Nobody worked harder than Mozart. By the time he was twenty-eight years old, his hands were deformed because of all the hours he had spent practicing, performing, and gripping a quill pen to compose. That's the missing element in the popular portrait of Mozart.
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I feel I can handle the architecture of dance as well as anybody.
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Balzac loved courtesans. They were independent women, and in the 19th century, that was a breed that was just evolving.
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I'm not interested in seeing dance die. It's not to my advantage. Nor is it to our culture's advantage or anybody else's.
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I don't hate language. I have my own language, but I also enjoy the English language. Obviously, you don't read a lot of literature and not care about language.
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I have a sort of tactility about music. I go into record stores and just run my fingers over it, the spines.
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It's always a problem, getting the curtain in at the end of the first act; having enough of a resolve so that you can bring the curtain in and then opening the show a second time is a little bizarre as a tradition. I've always preferred to go straight through.
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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.
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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.
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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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The artist doesn't really think about consequences - he or she does the work, stands back and looks at and thinks, 'Hmm, that could have worked better like this.' But as a person who needs to sell tickets to do the next work, one needs to analyze how it does or does not hit its mark.
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There are very few critics who have historical context or authority.
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When I was a kid, toe dancing and toe shoes had a meaning in our culture as a serious kind of art.
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It's very important to work myself physically as hard as I can.
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Art is an investigation.
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The ultimate point of a piece for me is that it drives the next one. Does it open new doors? That's the success of a piece.
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There's the tradition of the 19th-century ballets, and the 20th century has had a difficult time with that tradition. And it's had a difficult time with many components of the Romantic imagination because of modernism.
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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.
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A commission is an invitation to fall in love.
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I've read probably 25 or 30 books by Balzac, all of Tolstoy - the novels and letters - and all of Dickens. I learned my craft from these guys.
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If I didn't believe in myself as a dancer, I wouldn't choreograph.
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My own physicality, not an abstract idea, makes me a choreographer.