The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.
Interpretation
Ballet should convey its messages through movement alone, not requiring verbal explanation.
Twyla Tharp emphasizes the power of ballet as a form of storytelling that transcends spoken language. She believes that through its choreography and movement, ballet can communicate emotions and narratives directly to the audience, creating a universal connection that doesn't rely on words to be understood.
In practice
During a dance workshop to emphasize the importance of movement over words.
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.
I am still pushing the edge of what my body can do.
No one is born with skill. It is developed through exercise, through repetition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time.
Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering. Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.
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.
Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft.
My small torrent of words dissipated into an elaborate sense of expanding and receding. It was my entrance into the radiance of imagination. This process was especially magnified within the fevers of influenza, measles, chickenpox, and mumps. I got them all and with each I was privileged with a new level of awareness. Lying deep within myself, the symmetry of a snowflake spinning above me, intensifying through my lids, I seized a most worthy souvenir, a shard of heavenβs kaleidoscope.
I can't imagine ever writing anything of any kind on a machine. I never tried to write either poetry or prose on a typewriter. I like to do it on useless paper, scrap paper, because it's of no importance.
My paintings are not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind.
An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.
Architecture does not change anything. It's always on the side of the wealthy. The important thing is to believe that it can make life better.
Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me.
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