Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" I'm not interested in seeing dance die. It's not to my advantage. Nor is it to our culture's advantage or anybody else's. "

Twyla Tharp

Dance

Seeing

Culture

" I see dance as glue for a community. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Let me put it this way: I would like to direct a successful film. An unsuccessful film I would not like to direct. Films are very difficult. "

Twyla Tharp

Way

Difficult

" Nothing is more terrifying to me, really, than the status quo. I'll make mistakes before I keep doing something the same way. "

Twyla Tharp

Nothing

Way

" The necessity to constantly turn in an excellent performance, to be absolutely wedded to this dedication and this ideal means that as a child you're going to pay for it personally. "

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

" I work because I have issues and questions and feelings and thoughts that I want to have a look at. I'm not in need of, or wanting, particularly, to know what other folk are up to. "

" 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. "

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

" If a thing moves, it lives. "

" 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 do it. "

" I never studied with Balanchine, but his work was very important to me. "

" When I started thinking seriously about learning the rules of narrative, I thought, 'You've learned the rules of dancing from the ballet; what's the matter with learning the laws of theater from the people who know how to do it?' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I had always seen myself as a star; I wanted to be a galaxy. "

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

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

" 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. "

" I do not watch television, never have. "

" 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. "

Twyla Tharp

Best

History

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I've survived inattention. I hope to God I survive attention. "

" Nobody worked harder than Mozart. By the time he was twenty-eight years old, his hands were deformed because of all the hours he had spent practicing, performing, and gripping a quill pen to compose. That's the missing element in the popular portrait of Mozart. "

" Broadway has some very tight expectations as to what a show is. "

" Kids should be encouraged to compete. "