Dance is the most fundamental of all art forms.
Interpretation
Dance is a basic form of expression that underlies all artistic endeavors.
This quote by Twyla Tharp emphasizes the idea that dance serves as a foundational element of artistic expression. It suggests that movement and rhythm are fundamental to creativity, transcending other art forms, and that through dance, artists can convey emotions and stories in a unique and powerful way.
In practice
Including this quote in a speech at a dance recital to highlight the importance of dance as an 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.
My feeling is that poetry will wither on the vine if you don't regularly come back to the simplest fundamentals of the poem: rhythm, rhyme, simple subjects - love, death, war.
Dance is bigger than the physical body. When you extend your arm, it doesn't stop at the end of your fingers, because you're dancing bigger than that; you're dancing spirit.
I should write for the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night's labors should be burnt every morning and no eye shine upon them.
The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.
What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound than a portrait.
Wagner manages to convey emotion with music better than anyone, before or since.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.