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Dance Quotes by Twyla Tharp

70 Dance quotes by Twyla Tharp

All Dance quotes Twyla Tharp’s page

Twyla Tharp sees dance as a way to act morally and honestly, like a democratic experiment. She talks about dance breaking gender stereotypes and acting as glue that holds a community together. She also compares the physical act of dancing to a sport like boxing, where you stand and do it.

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What we want from modern dance is courage and audacity.

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Who a dancer is physically feeds into character for me. Always has.

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My own physicality, not an abstract idea, makes me a choreographer.

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If I didn't believe in myself as a dancer, I wouldn't choreograph.

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Dance is the most fundamental of all art forms.

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I find that dancers are only well trained in ballet these days.

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A dancer's life is all about repetition.

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This is the strange thing: Dancers don't age.

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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…

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I was interested in becoming a show dancer, for which I tried, but I'm not tall enough.

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We're a machine and we have to be worked in the same way we have to be fed.

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I'm not one who divides music, dance or art into various categories. Either something works, or it doesn't.

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Dance has never been a particularly easy life, and everybody knows that.

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My dancers expect me to deliver because my choreography represents their livelihood.

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I do believe that when dancing is right, the movement possesses a logic common to us all.

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When I was a kid, toe dancing and toe shoes had a meaning in our culture as a serious kind of art.

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In those days, male dancers were a rarer breed than women. as they are still today, A good male dancer, one as…

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I began to discriminate between fear and excitement. The two, though very close, are completely different. Fear is negative excitement, choking your…

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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…

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The way I enjoyed spending time most was dancing. That's from the time I was a very small child, When I was…

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when dancing is right, the movement possesss a logic common to us all, an inevitability that takes it beyond the personal and…

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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…

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When I started thinking seriously about learning the rules of narrative, I thought, 'You've learned the rules of dancing from the ballet;…

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I have not wanted to intimidate audiences. I have not wanted my dancing to be an elitist form. That doesn't mean I…

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I walk into a large white room. It's a dance studio in midtown Manhattan. The room is clean, virtually spotless if you…

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I used to say to myself, 'Well, in the old days everybody danced because they loved to dance, and there was none…

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I repeat the wake-up, the workout, the quick shower, the breakfast of three hard-boiled egg whites and a cup of coffee, the…

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“Dance is a tough life (and a tougher way to make a living). Choreography is even more brutal because there is no…

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Dance is just like film in that it allows for thoughts in movement.

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Dance is the stepchild of the arts.

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I always, somehow, knew that I was going to dance.

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I feel I can handle the architecture of dance as well as anybody.

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It's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.

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I do everything I know how in a dance.

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The rewards of dancing are very different from choreographing.

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I see dance as glue for a community.

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Dancing is like bank robbery, it takes split-second timing.

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Dancers are allowed, indeed encouraged, to remain children forever.

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Every dance I make is a dive into this well of ancient memory.

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Living had little use for me other than how it could be funneled into dance.

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More by Twyla Tharp

“A lot of habitually creative people have preparation rituals linked to the setting in which they choose to start their day. By putting themselves…

I have learned over the years that you should never save for two meetings what you can accomplish in one.

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…

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…

The art of these Fifties movies was in sustaining forever the moment before sex.

This is not a pleasant route for many young people to consider. You have to be either hopelessly passionate, or very stupid.

I often say that in making dances I can make a world where I think things are done morally, done democratically, done honestly.

I had received my first establishment grants in response to applications filed the year before. To the pages of baffling forms I had simply…

I find the aesthetics of the 20th century hopelessly barren.

I don't think that scheduling is uncreative. I think that structure is required for creativity.

I have always felt one of the things dance should do - its business being so clearly physical - is challenge the culture's gender…

There really is nothing I ever had access to that I didn't appreciate.

Destiny, quite often, is a determined parent. Mozart was hardly some naive prodigy who sat down at the keyboard and, with God whispering in…

When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love and faith.

Things change all the time, so why do people make such a philosophical to-do that things are constantly in transition?