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.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the unique storytelling experience found in silent films, emphasizing the importance of visual expression.
Twyla Tharp's quote illustrates her formative experiences in a drive-in theater, where the absence of sound compelled her to focus on non-verbal storytelling. This environment taught her that action and visuals can convey narratives powerfully, highlighting the significance of creative expression in various art forms.
In practice
Using the quote in a film studies class to discuss the importance of visual storytelling.
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.
Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft.
Creativity is more about taking the facts, fictions, and feelings we store away and finding new ways to connect them. What we're talking about here is metaphor. Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art, if it is not art itself. Metaphor is our vocabulary for connecting what we are experiencing now with what we have experienced before. It's not only how we express what we remember , it's how we interpret it - for ourselves and others.
A John Updike is a once-in-a-generation phenomenon, if that generation is lucky: so comfortable in so many genres, the same lively, generous intelligence suffusing all he did.
Movies in Hollywood now, for the past 20 or 30 years, are made mainly by lawyers or agents.
A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.
You have to be careful about over-politicizing the utterances of people of colour because, oftentimes, there's poetry that seeks to go beyond that narrative.
Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.
If you wait, people will forget your camera, and the soul will drift up into view.
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