Twyla Tharp Quotes

Author Image

Twyla Tharp

Profession : Dancer

Birth : July 1, 1941

I've always found it necessity to strip away everything but the most fundamental ways to work - the rest is style.

Twyla Tharp

It's very important to work myself physically as hard as I can.

Twyla Tharp

The only way to know the truth of a movement is to do it on your own body.

Twyla Tharp

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.

Twyla Tharp

If you're speaking of love, you really must include the element of uncertainty - and perhaps it's best approached as the art of constant maintenance.

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

'The Creative Habit' is basically about how you work alone, how you survive as a solitary artist. 'The Collaborative Habit' is obviously about surviving with other people.

Twyla Tharp

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

Twyla Tharp

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

Twyla Tharp

Counterpoint is a component that gives real energy, and it is about optimism.

Twyla Tharp

The ultimate point of a piece for me is that it drives the next one. Does it open new doors? That's the success of a piece.

Twyla Tharp

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

Twyla Tharp

Everything present is included in the past somewhere; nobody's present pops out of nowhere.

Twyla Tharp

It's very difficult for me to do fund raising for my own organization if I'm working for other companies because sponsors will say, 'Well, hey, man, if she's doing a ballet for Ballet Theatre, we'll give money to Ballet Theatre.'

Twyla Tharp

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

Twyla Tharp

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.

Twyla Tharp

I think Tolstoy had an unbelievably complicated relationship with women.

Twyla Tharp

Balzac loved courtesans. They were independent women, and in the 19th century, that was a breed that was just evolving.

Twyla Tharp

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

Twyla Tharp

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