Twyla Tharp Quotes

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.

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

Ultimately there is no such thing as failure. There are lessons learned in different ways.

Our ability to grow is directly proportional to an ability to entertain the uncomfortable.

Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering. Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.

The irony of multitasking is that it's exhausting: when you're doing two or three things simultaneously, you use more energy than the sum of energy required to do each task independently. You're also cheating yourself because your're not doing anything excellently. You're compromising your virtuosity. In the words of T. S. Elliot, you're 'distracted from distractions by distractions'.

No one is born with skill. It is developed through exercise, through repetition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time.

If you only do what you know and do it very, very well, chances are that you won't fail. You'll just stagnate, and your work will get less and less interesting, and that's failure by erosion

Every work of art needs a spine – an underlying theme, a motive for coming into existence. It doesn't have to be apparent to the audience. But you need it at the start of the creative process to guide you and keep you going.

dance is simply the refinement of human movement - walking, running, and jumping. We are all experts. There should be no art form more accessible than dance, yet no art is more mystifying in the public imagination.

Creativity is more about taking the facts, fictions, and feelings we store away and finding new ways to connect them. What we're talking about here is metaphor. Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art, if it is not art itself. Metaphor is our vocabulary for connecting what we are experiencing now with what we have experienced before. It's not only how we express what we remember , it's how we interpret it - for ourselves and others.

You don't get into the mood to create – it's discipline.

Life is about moving, it’s about change. And when things stop doing that they’re dead.

More often than not I've found, a rut is a consequence of sticking to tried and tested methods that don't take into account how you or the world has changed.

If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.

Reading, conversation, environment, culture, heroes, mentors, nature – all are lottery tickets for creativity. Scratch away at them and you’ll find out how big a prize you’ve won.

When you're in a groove, you're not spinning your wheels; you're moving forward in a straight and narrow path without pauses or hitches. You're unwavering, undeviating, and unparalleled in your purpose. A groove is the best place in the world. Because when you are in it, you have the freedom to explore, where everything you question leads you to new avenues and new routes.

Art is an investigation.

Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism.

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. The most productive ones get started early in the morning, when the world is quiet, the phones aren't ringing, and their minds are rested, alert, and not yet polluted by other people's words.

You have to believe there's something at the other side. And you have to have faith in yourself. You have to think that you have the tools to accomplish it.

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

Dance is the stepchild of the arts.

Over time, as the daily routines become second nature, discipline morphs into habit.

Perfect practice makes perfect.

There are as many forms of memory as there are ways of perceiving, and every one of them is worth mining for inspiration.

A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet, that the two disciplines were totally separate, and if you did one, you couldn’t do the other. I’m beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.

I'm often asked, 'Where do you get your ideas?' ...It's like asking, 'Where do you find air to breathe?' Ideas are all around you.

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.

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

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

In dreams, anything can be anything, and everybody can do. We can fly, we can turn upside down, we can transform into anything.

I do everything I know how in a dance.

There's a paradox in the notion that creativity should be a habit. We think of creativity as a way of keeping everything fresh and new, while habit implies routine and repetition. That paradox intrigues me because it occupies the place where creativity and skill rub up against each other.

I think that anyone who's pushed to do the very best that they can is privileged. It's a luxury.

The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.

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

When you stimulate your body, your brain comes alive in ways you can't simulate in a sedentary position.

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.

The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.

Later in life, one of the compensations is gliding effortlessly into focus in a thing. Since it is who we are, anything that is not the focus or supportive thereof is just not us. Even outside issues, when they arise, are interesting in that they only help define the focus more clearly.

It is extremely arrogant and very foolish to think that you can ever outwit your audience.

The content and thematic materials of dance is, of itself, like boxing. You play tennis and baseball. But boxing is not a sport you play: you stand up and do it.

I also had a will that let me eliminate everything that stood in the way of my becoming the best dancer I could be. By a gradual process... (I) had invested every bit of my dreams, my hopes, my energies in defining myself as a dancer.

The thing about creativity is, people are going to laugh at it. Get over it.

Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits.

When you're in a rut, you have to question everything except your ability to get out of it.

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

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

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