Twyla Tharp Quotes
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You either entertain an audience or you don't.
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Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits.
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My dancers expect me to deliver because my choreography represents their livelihood.
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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 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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I think Tolstoy had an unbelievably complicated relationship with women.
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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.'
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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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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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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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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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Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.
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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 see dance as glue for a community.
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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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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 always found it necessity to strip away everything but the most fundamental ways to work - the rest is style.
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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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I am still pushing the edge of what my body can do.
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I had always seen myself as a star; I wanted to be a galaxy.
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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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It is extremely arrogant and very foolish to think that you can ever outwit your audience.
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Kids should be encouraged to compete.