A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I'm beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.
Interpretation
Twyla Tharp suggests that artificial barriers between different forms of artistic expression can limit creativity and growth.
In this quote, Twyla Tharp challenges the notion of strict boundaries within the arts, specifically between modern dance and ballet. She implies that such divisions can be detrimental, preventing artists from exploring and merging different styles, ultimately leading to a richer, more innovative creative landscape. By advocating for the removal of these 'walls', Tharp calls for greater openness and collaboration in the arts.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of artistic collaboration, I would quote Tharp to illustrate my point.
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.
I can't say what people use the experience of listening to songs for, but I would never tell somebody what it is supposed to mean. That defeats the purpose of making it. Hopefully, whoever connects with it connects with it in their own way, and it can mean whatever it is supposed to mean to them.
While an artist can choose whether or not to be responsive and responsible towards other human beings, by definition a designer must be.
Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spiders' spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground.
When I paint green, it doesn't mean grass; when I paint blue, it doesn't mean sky.
The music we play has to be tomorrow's, the things we say have to be today, and the reason for bothering is yesterday.
The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward.
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