Twyla Tharp Quotes
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I thought I had to make an impact on history. I had to become the greatest choreographer of my time. That was my mission. Posterity deals with us however it sees fit. But I gave it 20 years of my best shot.
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In circuses, there is a lot of magic. Things become other things.
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I realize that dancers have worked long and hard for standards. However, on occasion, I think that it's good to examine one's heart and ask why are we dancing.
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I find that dancers are only well trained in ballet these days.
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I often say that in making dances I can make a world where I think things are done morally, done democratically, done honestly.
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I've always believed that a dance evening energizes an audience, that an audience goes out feeling chemically stronger and more optimistic. This is what I understand about dance. And this is an important thing. We need this. Our culture needs it.
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I'm a known reader. That's what I do with my time.
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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.
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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.
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Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism.
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Everything present is included in the past somewhere; nobody's present pops out of nowhere.
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The only way to know the truth of a movement is to do it on your own body.
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I do not watch television, never have.
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My favorite audience is everybody. I worked in a drive-in theater from the time I was 8 years old until I went to college, and I'm accustomed to everybody can buy a ticket and everybody should be taken into account.
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Walt Disney was a master of the human psychology. His sense of timing, sense of speed. In a sense, those cartoons are like Rorschach tests.
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Desire is the first thing a modern dancer should have. Skill can be developed. But if you don't have desire as a modern dancer, forget it.
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When I started making dances in the '60s, narrative dance was sort of off the radar screen. What was important at the time in the avant-garde was minimalism.
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It was not until I had graduated from college that I made a professional commitment to it. Frankly, I didn't think it wise. I was my own interior parental force, and it's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.
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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.
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I don't judge. Judgment is not my business. Existing is my business.
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Dance has never been a particularly easy life, and everybody knows that.
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To survive, you've got to keep wheedling your way. You can't just sit there and fight against odds when it's not going to work. You have to turn a corner, dig a hole, go through a tunnel - and find a way to keep moving.
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I've always felt compelled to explore range, because, as far as I know, we're only here once. So let's see how much we can encompass.
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The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.