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.
Interpretation
Dance, like boxing, requires engagement and presence rather than just playfulness.
In this quote, Twyla Tharp draws a parallel between dance and boxing, highlighting that both art forms require a profound level of engagement and commitment. Unlike traditional sports that may be experienced in a playful manner, dance, similar to boxing, demands a fully present and active participation, emphasizing the deeper emotional and physical investment involved in the art of movement.
In practice
During a dance workshop, the instructor referenced this quote to emphasize the seriousness of engaging with the art form.
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.
No one can be an artist without a rich inner life.
When I'm working, I'm so narrowly focused on sound, language, rhythm, flow, that I rarely feel the emotion of the text. It's only after - long after - I've finished a piece that I can experience in any way its emotional charge.
When I'm in certain moods, a conversation will start up in my head, and suddenly I'll realize that the language has reached a very high and interesting level, and then lines and stanzas will just kind of appear, full-blown.
the poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople... you and i are human beings; mostpeople are snobs.
Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew.
One of the things that separates a good genre movie from a bad genre movie, I always think, ironically, is when you care about the people. The dime a dozen ones are where you don't have any awareness of the character.
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