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" When I started making dances in the '60s, narrative dance was sort of off the radar screen. What was important at the time in the avant-garde was minimalism. "
Twyla Tharp
Dance
Time
Off
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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. "
Twyla Tharp
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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 heart and ask why are we dancing. "
Twyla Tharp
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" 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. "
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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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" If a thing moves, it lives. "
Twyla Tharp
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" Well, Mozart is extraordinary not only in that he became virtuoso along the lines of his father, but that he had that compositional gift, that melodic gift. By the time he was four, he was doing piano concertos with harmony in the background. "
Twyla Tharp
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" '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
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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 haven't wanted it to be excellent. "
Twyla Tharp
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" The artist doesn't really think about consequences - he or she does the work, stands back and looks at and thinks, 'Hmm, that could have worked better like this.' But as a person who needs to sell tickets to do the next work, one needs to analyze how it does or does not hit its mark. "
Twyla Tharp
She
Think
Work
" 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. "
Twyla Tharp
Old
Nobody
Pen
" Balzac loved courtesans. They were independent women, and in the 19th century, that was a breed that was just evolving. "
Twyla Tharp
Independent
Century
Women
" I find the aesthetics of the 20th century hopelessly barren. "
Twyla Tharp
20th Century
Find
Century
" My own physicality, not an abstract idea, makes me a choreographer. "
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Makes
My Own
" Do I watch dancers as people? Yes, absolutely. Do I watch really good dancers for specifically who they are? Absolutely, because how they move best and how they look best is going to be most familiar to them, and not necessarily to me. "
Twyla Tharp
Best
Watch
People
" Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism. "
Twyla Tharp
Old
Behind
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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. "
Twyla Tharp
Fly
Down
Upside Down
" In those days, male dancers were a rarer breed than women. as they are still today, A good male dancer, one as strong as we were, was very difficult to come by if you couldn't afford to pay them. "
Twyla Tharp
Women
Dancers
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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. "
Twyla Tharp
Better
Children
Mother
" I think Tolstoy had an unbelievably complicated relationship with women. "
Twyla Tharp
Relationship
Women
Think
" What is music about? You can't listen to one era, one composer, and know what music is about. "
Twyla Tharp
You
Composer
Era
" I think people want very much to simplify their lives enough so that they can control the things that make it possible to sleep at night. "
Twyla Tharp
Night
Control
Think
" Kids should be encouraged to compete. "
Twyla Tharp
Should
Compete
Encouraged
" I see dance as glue for a community. "
Twyla Tharp
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" I don't think that scheduling is uncreative. I think that structure is required for creativity. "
Twyla Tharp
Creativity
Structure
I Think
" 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. "
Twyla Tharp
Keep Moving
You
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" People often say to me, 'I don't know anything about dance.' I say, 'Stop. You got up this morning, and you're walking. You are an expert.' "
Twyla Tharp
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Morning
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" 'Bum's Rush' is a piece about timing, and everything that's in the piece needs to be with the piece. If people are missing, or marking, or unable to use their voices, the impulses that prompt the action are lost, and its logic crumbles. "
Twyla Tharp
People
Timing
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" I've survived inattention. I hope to God I survive attention. "
Twyla Tharp
Attention
Hope
God
" Dance is just like film in that it allows for thoughts in movement. "
Twyla Tharp
Thoughts
Like
Film
" In terms of individuals who actually inspired me, very few of the academic people that I had access to had that power over me. Maybe it's simply because I wasn't that committed to geometry. "
Twyla Tharp
Me
Over
Power