Twyla Tharp Quotes
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Everything present is included in the past somewhere; nobody's present pops out of nowhere.
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I don't judge. Judgment is not my business. Existing is my business.
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At the ballet classes I took when I first came to New York, I would see great dancers like Cynthia Gregory and Lupe Serrano. I would look at them and study what they could do, and what I couldn't do. And then I'd think maybe they should try what I could do.
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Schubert had arguably the same melodic gift as Mozart, but even less support. He didn't have the early exposure, never got to travel anywhere, and yet generated and amassed a body of work that grew and developed and is very profound.
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I find that dancers are only well trained in ballet these days.
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I think that anyone who's pushed to do the very best that they can is privileged. It's a luxury.
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In circuses, there is a lot of magic. Things become other things.
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I grew up in a drive-in theater, from the time I was 8, working in a snack bar watching four features every week. It was silent theater in the sense that this was a drive-in, which meant that I often saw the films going with no sound. But I learned to tell stories through action.
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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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The formal education that I received made little sense to me.
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This is the strange thing: Dancers don't age.
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In dreams, anything can be anything, and everybody can do. We can fly, we can turn upside down, we can transform into anything.
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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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Dance is the most fundamental of all art forms.
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Dance is just like film in that it allows for thoughts in movement.
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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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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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I started formal piano training when I was 4. From there I had little violas, and I had dancing lessons of every sort and description, and painting lessons. I had German. And shorthand.
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Counterpoint is a component that gives real energy, and it is about optimism.
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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 don't think that scheduling is uncreative. I think that structure is required for creativity.
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Work is work; wherever I'm working, I do the best I can. If the actual dollars come from investors as opposed to taxpayers and patrons, what's the difference?
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With each piece I've completed I have worked to make it intact, and each of them has been an equal high. It's like children. A mother refuses to pick out one as a favorite, and I can't do any better with the dances.
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There is obviously a power and a truth in action that doesn't lie, which words easily can do.