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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.
Twyla Tharp -
You either entertain an audience or you don't.
Twyla Tharp
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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.
Twyla Tharp -
If I didn't believe in myself as a dancer, I wouldn't choreograph.
Twyla Tharp -
My dancers expect me to deliver because my choreography represents their livelihood.
Twyla Tharp -
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.
Twyla Tharp -
There are very few critics who have historical context or authority.
Twyla Tharp -
If a thing moves, it lives.
Twyla Tharp
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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.
Twyla Tharp -
When I was a kid, toe dancing and toe shoes had a meaning in our culture as a serious kind of art.
Twyla Tharp -
Judgment is not my business. Existing is my business.
Twyla Tharp -
I see dance as glue for a community.
Twyla Tharp -
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 -
I've always found it necessity to strip away everything but the most fundamental ways to work - the rest is style.
Twyla Tharp
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I had always seen myself as a star; I wanted to be a galaxy.
Twyla Tharp -
It is extremely arrogant and very foolish to think that you can ever outwit your audience.
Twyla Tharp -
I think Tolstoy had an unbelievably complicated relationship with women.
Twyla Tharp -
Nothing is more terrifying to me, really, than the status quo. I'll make mistakes before I keep doing something the same way.
Twyla Tharp -
We don't need to illustrate music; music illustrates itself.
Twyla Tharp -
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.
Twyla Tharp
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My father always said, 'I don't care if you're a ditch digger, as long as you're the best ditch digger in the world.'
Twyla Tharp -
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.
Twyla Tharp -
Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.
Twyla Tharp -
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