Twyla Tharp Quotes - Page 4

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.

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

Usually kids who are talented have the brashness to think they can do anything, but they don't often get the chance to see how close they can come.

Don’t sign on for more problems than you must. Resist the temptation to involve yourself in other people’s zones of expertise and responsibility. Monitor troublesome situations if you need to, but don’t insert yourself unless you’re running out of time and a solution is nowhere in sight. In short, stifle your inner control freak.

I have learned over the years that you should never save for two meetings what you can accomplish in one.

The last two - distractions and fears - are the dangerous ones. They're the habitual demons that invade the launch of any project. No one starts a creative endeavor without a certain amount of fear; the key is to learn how to keep free-floating fears from paralyzing you before you've begun. When I feel that sense of dread, I try to make it as specific as possible.

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.

I’m much stronger than most women. Consequently, when I work with men, or when I’m partnered by men... We can actually go into kinds of movement that haven’t been available before, simply because I’ve strengthened myself as a woman, not because I’ve weakened him.

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.

Confidence is a trait that has to be earned honestly and refreshed constantly; you have to work as hard to protect your skills as you did to develop them. . . The one thing that creative souls around the world have in common is that they all have to practice to maintain their skills. Art is a vast democracy of habit.

But obligation, I eventually saw, is not the same as commitment, and it's certainly not an acceptable reason to stick with something that isn't working

when the time came I would do battle with my mother for the right to sit at the center of my own life.

As people who have commitments and obligations, we try to blockade emotions and go on our course towards excellence, and that's a lie. I've definitely paid a price. Everything is an exchange.

To embrace luck, you have to enhance your tolerance for ambiguity.

I don't think politicians should be allowed into power who are not familiar with their bodies, because that's where our bottom line is. And I know that they would make totally different decisions if they felt responsible simply for their own bodies.

You don't have a really good idea until you combine two little ideas.

A commission is an invitation to fall in love.

Whom the gods wish to destroy, they give unlimited resources.

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.

I repeat the wake-up, the workout, the quick shower, the breakfast of three hard-boiled egg whites and a cup of coffee, the hour to make my morning calls and deal with correspondence, the two hours of stretching and working out ideas by myself in the studio ... That's my day, every day. A dancer's life is all about repetition.

I have the wherewithal to challenge myself for my entire life. That's a great gift.

In the end, there is no ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for another. The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself. Find a working environment where the prospect of wrestling with your muse doesn't scare you, doesn't shut you down. It should make you want to be there, and once you find it, stick with it. To get the creative habit, you need a working environment that's habit-forming. All preferred working states, no matter how eccentric, have one thing in common: When you enter into them, they compel you to get started.

The notion of the hero as outsider, as alien, is forget it, over, done with. It's not about being against society anymore. It's about standing there, holding something up. It's not pulling away.