Twyla Tharp Quotes - Page 3

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'.

Skill is how you close the gap between what you can see in your mind's eye and what you can produce; the more skill you have, the more sophisticated and accomplished your ideas can be. With absolute skill comes absolute confidence.

I learned very early that an audience would relax and look at things differently if they felt they could laugh with you from time to time. There's an energy that comes through the release of tension that is laughter.

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

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

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

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

Obligation is a flimsy base for creativity, way down the list behind passion, courage, instinct, and the desire to do something great.

The more you fail in private, the less you will fail in public.

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.

Judgment is not my business. Existing is my business.

Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art.

Whether or not God has kissed your brow, you still have to work. Without learning and preparation, you won't know how to harness the power of that kiss.

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

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

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.

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.

Dance is the stepchild of the arts.

I've always thought my creative life began the moment my mother called me Twyla.

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

It takes skill to bring something you've imagined into the world: to use words to create believable lives, to select the colors and textures of paint to represent a haystack at sunset, to combine ingredients to make a flavorful dish. No one is born with that skill. It is developed through exercise, through repitition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time. . . . 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.

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.

Mastery is an elusive concept. You never know when you achieve it absolutely and it may not help you to feel you've attained it. We can recognize it more readily in others than we can in ourselves. We have to discover our own definition of it.

The routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightening bold of inspiration, maybe more. And this routine is available to everyone.

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