Explore Quotes by Twyla Tharp

Things change all the time, so why do people make such a philosophical to-do that things are constantly in transition?

The ultimate point of a piece for me is that it drives the next one. Does it open new doors? That's the success of a piece.

My own physicality, not an abstract idea, makes me a choreographer.

'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.

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've always found it necessity to strip away everything but the most fundamental ways to work - the rest is style.

Desire is the first thing a modern dancer should have. Skill can be developed. But if you don't have desire as a modern dancer, forget it.

When I say I can see through clothes, sometimes I try to use it as an X-ray vision to look into the dancer and see who this dancer is right now, at this exact moment in time. I live inside them in a way.

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.

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.'

What is music about? You can't listen to one era, one composer, and know what music is about.

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?'

When I look at the people who are the guiding figures in modern dance, I think, 'This does not look to me like the way I want to spend my days.'

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

I don't think that scheduling is uncreative. I think that structure is required for creativity.

'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.

Dance is the most fundamental of all art forms.

I am still pushing the edge of what my body can do.

Critics should be looked at simply as commentators.

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.

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.