Twyla Tharp Quotes
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I look for dancers who have all the technique in the world. But they must be dancers who are open-minded, who are willing to forget that they know anything. They also have to be gorgeous; they must have a clear image of themselves and strong personalities.
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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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Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits.
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My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education, which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity, and there really was no judgment.
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After so many years, I've learned that being creative is a full-time job with its own daily patterns. That's why writers, for example, like to establish routines for themselves.
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I don't think politicians should be allowed into power who are not familiar with their bodies, because that's where our bottom line is. And I know that they would make totally different decisions if they felt responsible simply for their own bodies.
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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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I'm obviously always interested in the dancer who's an athlete and vice versa. I expect dancers to be in condition like an athlete is and to challenge themselves in the same way, to the same physical degree.
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My own physicality, not an abstract idea, makes me a choreographer.
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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.
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No artist is well served in thinking what will happen to their works. The best one can hope is that they'll enter the mainstream, and people will pull bits and pieces from them.
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When I was a kid, the avant-garde to me was boring because it was just the flip side of being really successful.
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Modern dancers should be doing things no one else is doing, and it should come from the gut.
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I always find that the best collaborations are when you work with people that know what they're doing, and you leave them alone to do it.
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My dancers expect me to deliver because my choreography represents their livelihood.
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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.
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Do I watch dancers as people? Yes, absolutely. Do I watch really good dancers for specifically who they are? Absolutely, because how they move best and how they look best is going to be most familiar to them, and not necessarily to me.
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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.
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Proust writes, he remembers, physically. He depends on his body to give him the information that will bring him to the past. His book is called 'In Search of Lost Time,' and he does it through the senses. He does it through smell. He does it through feeling. He does it through texture. It is all physically driven, that language.
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You either entertain an audience or you don't.
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Judgment is not my business. Existing is my business.
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If a thing moves, it lives.
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I've survived inattention. I hope to God I survive attention.
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I always tell students that you've got to be practical. You do not need a dream. You need a purpose, something you can wake up to in the morning when the dream is dissipated.